


Who He Could Not Be

by FlawlessIvory101



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Philip officially comes in fifth chapter, bit of religion talking at beginning; not important to the plot, homophobic slurs (mostly by Lukas himself), i suck at tags please send help, plus a little bit of backstory, this is basically the show retold from Lukas' POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2018-12-05 15:25:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 78,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11580843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlawlessIvory101/pseuds/FlawlessIvory101
Summary: Lukas knew exactly who he could and could not be from the time he was in middle school. He could not be the boy that looked at other boys with engrossed attraction, no, that was meant for the pretty girls in his school only. He would not be that guy, no matter how many handsome boys his eyes would chase within the hallways. He did a good job of hiding behind beautiful girls until Philip Shea moved into town and something like self-acceptance started to touch his heart in the midst of deadly circumstances.





	1. Sick Cells and Sugar Packets

**Part One**

**Sick Cells and Sugar Packets**

**“I don’t like it now you’re dead, it’s not the same when I scratch my own head”**

**Nana by The 1975**

   Rain pounds against the truck, and from inside the rhythmic sound soothes the ache in Sally’s temples, if only for just a moment. Bo is sitting beside her in the truck, parked over on the side of the dirt road, sheltering them from the rest of civilization. Bo’s hand is squeezing hers, but at this point she isn’t too sure if the gesture of comfort is meant to ground him or her. Maybe it’s for both of them, but right now she just feels numb aside from the pounding in her head and the phantom feeling of tired cells never sleeping and making the lump in her breast even larger.

   “Don’t leave me, Sally,” Bo whispers, and suddenly feeling rushes from her fingertips to her toes. She clutches onto his hand tighter and her lips tremble even as her eyes remain dry. “What am I supposed to do without you?” His Red Hook accent is thick, and Sally wishes more than anything in the world that it was thick with happiness or passion, not crushing sadness. When she speaks, her own accent is thick with more passion and seriousness than any of the many other overwhelming emotions choking her.

   “Take care of Lukas,” she says, leaving no room for argument. “Even if you can hardly take care of yourself, do not leave him alone to fend for himself. I will never forgive you if you do Bo; I mean it.”

   “I know,” Bo answers quietly and squeezes onto her hand even tighter. “I wouldn’t forgive myself either.” Sally could only nod in response, the persistent knot in her throat preventing her from speaking. She knew Bo loved Lukas more than words could possibly hope to describe, but sometimes love on its own just isn’t enough. Bo didn’t have the same drive she did and he couldn’t take the role of a mother on top of being a father, and she didn’t expect him to. He never did well with change, which is why he took on his late father’s farm in the same town he spent his whole life in, and married the girl he dated all throughout sophomore to senior year. He couldn’t handle large changes, even if they were for the better, but tragic drastic changes were his nightmare. Now the possibility of losing his wife seems more likely than keeping her by his side… oh, what a cruel world to live in.

   “How could He do this?” Bo’s voice is weak, and Sally turns to look at him. “How could such a loving God be so cruel? Why you? Why like this?”

   Sally wishes she had the answers Bo wanted so desperately, but she didn’t have them, and even when she did she could not tell him for she would be another world away. “He is not cruel,” she murmurs and lied her second hand over his, telling him the only answer she knew. “He is merciful, you know that.”

   “Where is His mercy now?”

  “He has reasons we cannot even begin to fathom. Please, do not turn away from Him because of me. We were not promised happiness on this earth, even while the Devil assures suffering, but we are promised relief and eternal happiness and life if we just believe. We will meet again, never forget that.”

    Bo pulls Sally close over the console in between them and cries into her hair until he has no tears left to shed. If he felt her own tears against his neck, he did not mention it, and for that she is grateful.

    *******

“Mama?” five year old Lukas asks, poking his head around the door to his parents’ bedroom. “Can you read me a nighttime story?” He holds up a thin children’s book that has a worn spine that the pages are barely clinging to after many years of frequent use, and Lukas’ not so great job of care of it. It didn’t look like much, but it was Lukas’ favorite bedtime story and his mama always told him that she read it to him before he was even born. His mama used to read it to him almost every night without him even asking, but lately she’s been sleeping a lot and going to a big place that his daddy calls a hospital, where all the sick people go. Lukas doesn’t understand why his mommy has to go to this big place if she’s just sick; he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t stay home and take yucky medicine like he does when he’s sick. He doesn’t understand why she isn’t getting better.

   “Lukas,” his daddy says, voice almost sharp, from where he’s lying beside his mama in the bed. His daddy has been acting different too, and he is starting to look almost like grandpa because white hairs are starting to replace the yellow. “Mama doesn’t feel good,” and his voice is back to soft, but he sounds sad, and Lukas wonders why his daddy is always so angry or sad anymore when he used to always be happy. “Go on to bed, we’ll see you in the morning. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

   “Bo,” his mama says as she begins to sit up slowly, as if something was weighing her down even though she’s so skinny Lukas can almost see the outline of her bones. She pushes her wild hair out of her face and gives her husband a weak smile before turning to look at Lukas. “I’ll read it for you, Sweetie. It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”

   Lukas beams up at her and with the book still clutched in his tiny hand, he raises his arms and Sally picks him up into her own, cradling him against her chest. Lukas rests his head against her bosom as she carries him up the stairs to his bedroom, and he notices her chest isn’t as comfortable or warm as he remembers, and he wonders why the normally soft and welcoming place has become harder and smaller. His young mind cannot dwell on it further, and she sets him down onto his bed before long. When Lukas tucks his legs under his dirt bike blankets and hands her the book, Sally is crouched on the floor with her forehead pressed against the edge of his mattress, breathing shallowly.

   “Mama?” he calls fearfully, and before he can cry out for Daddy, she reaches out with a trembling hand and rubs his forearm. Her touch is just as warm and comforting as always, but even with it a feeling Lukas can’t describe churns in his belly. Mama shouldn’t be crouched on the ground and breathing like he did after he chased the turkeys around the barn for a long time, she shouldn’t be skipping bedtime stories so much, and she shouldn’t have been sick for so long.

   “Mama’s okay,” she says to him, and Lukas wants to believe it, but her face is pale and her eyes look red around the edges with black smudges, so dark their almost purple, underneath them. But the hand on his arm is still warm and it’s not trembling against him, so it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. “I’ll get better soon and I’ll read this story to you for as long as you want me to. I promise.” She smiles, and she hasn’t ever broken a promise to him so he smiles back, and believes her with his whole being. She takes the book from him, her smile staying in place while she tucks him even further under his favorite blanket and sits on the bed instead of the floor.

   “Close your eyes for Mama, Luka,” she murmurs softly, calling him the thing no one else in the whole wide world isn’t allowed to call him but her. It’s a special thing between them, a secret, just like their sugar packets. He closes his eyes, listens to the old book open and the silence that follows for a short moment before his mama begins to read. He falls asleep to the sound of her voice, her warmth pressing to his legs, and the smell of cinnamon that always surrounds his mama. “Goodnight, Moon,” Sally whispers, closes the book and leans down to kiss her son’s forehead. “And goodnight, Lukas. I love you, never forget that,” she says and sets the book on the nightstand. When she leaves his room, she leaves the door open, his night light softly illuminating in the corner, and that promise tucked away in his heart.

    *******

  A couple weeks later, the second Sunday of May is making its way, and Lukas is sitting in Mrs. Loren’s art class with a box of crayons and construction paper to make a card for his mama. He doesn’t know much of what to say, except for ‘I love you’ and an ‘I’m glad you’re my mama’, so he draws a picture of him and Mama standing on a flowery hill because his mama loves flowers as much as he loves her. The picture is just stick figures, and the hill is just a couple of half circles that Jackson Wallace says looks like a butt, but he knows his mama will love it just like every other card he gives her. He tells Jackson Wallace to shut up, glaring at him as menacingly as a five year old is able to muster, then goes back to coloring in his multi-colored flowers.

   He just finishes writing ‘I love you Mama as much as my dirt bikes!’ in large, sloppy hand-writing, when he hears Mrs. Loren talking in hushed whispers in the back with Andy Santagato. Curious, Lukas turns around to see Mrs. Loren kneeling down on the ground next to Andy, a hand on his arm, encouraging him to make a card for someone. Andy’s face is tucked away in his inner elbow as if he was sleeping, but the quiver of his small shoulders and redness of the tips of his ears tell a different story. Andy's mommy went up to be with the angles’ is what Lukas’ mama explained to him gently sometime last year. With a mommy in Heaven, Lukas knows that Andy has no mommy to make a card for, and with a strange sort of crushing feeling in his chest, Lukas hopes he never has to sit in the back with Andy Santagato with no mommy to make a card for. He doesn’t know what he would do without his mama.

   When he gets home from school that day, his mama is sitting on the sofa with a hot cup of tea in her hands and a thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders even though it’s hot outside. Lukas rushes to her without even taking off his backpack or his shoes, which his daddy scolds him for, but he’s jumping on the arm of the sofa before he can pay any mind to what his daddy is mad about. “I made this for you, Mama,” he says brightly, handing her the card, and her own face brightens just like it always does when he gives her his cards. As she looks at his picture and reads what he wrote and laughs while she pulls him into a hug that smells of cinnamon, Lukas’ mind jumps to Andy Santagato and his mommy dancing with the angels in Heaven. His mind can’t fathom why the picture of Andy Santagato just looking at a picture of his mommy today is so sad and leaves him feeling kind of like the ugly duckling without his mama in that storybook, but it does, and he hugs his frail mama even tighter and takes in a deep breath of cinnamon.

    *******

   School is finally out and Lukas is six now, and his mama is finally feeling good enough to go out to their favorite cafe in Tivoli. He and Mama are sitting side by side on the booth with the tear split down the middle while his daddy sits on the opposite of them, his nose still buried in his menu.

   “Bo, you know you’re going to get the Grand Slam, so why even bother reading that thing?” his mama said with a smile that looks like something Lukas would smile when he’s poking fun at his friends. His daddy makes a grumble sort of noise, and his mama’s fingers reach out to snag one of the pink sugar packets out of the holder and stuffs it into her jacket pocket before his daddy has the chance to look up and see. Lukas laughs, loud and gleeful, and he sees his daddy’s eyes poke over the top of his menu, but a plump waitress is standing at their table before he can ask what he was laughing about.

   “Sally!” the dark-skinned waitress says in surprise when her dark eyes look up from her little notepad, but she sounds happy, and that makes Lukas happy. “Oh, it’s been months since I’ve seen you. How are you feeling?”

   "Better today," his mama says in reply with a kind smile, and Lukas has hope that she's finally getting over whatever she was sick with because her skin is less pale and her eyes are more bright. "Chemo does have its perks, I guess." 

   “You’re still getting chemo?” the waitress asks, her eyebrows drawn and lips turned down into a frown, but Lukas misses it because he turns his attention to coloring on his coloring sheet that has the funny looking turkey on it. “I thought you’d finished.”

   “Yeah, I did, too,” Sally says, voice more tired and she swipes a hand through her hair so her bangs are out of her eyes. “But when I went for the check up, the doctor said that the tumor hadn’t reduced in size at all. He hoped I would be able to go without the surgery, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to avoid it for much longer.”

   “The surgery would just be taking the tumor out, wouldn’t it? I thought that was better than getting chemo or radiation.”

   “Ideally, yes. But my doctor said they just found the tumor too late and if I had gone into surgery first it would have been risky. They were hoping that chemo would reduce the size of it and keep the cancer out of my lymph nodes and spreading to other organs. It did keep it from spreading anywhere, but the size hasn’t changed a bit. They’ll have to perform the surgery anyway and if it’s successful I’ll have almost no breasts left.”

   “ _When_ the surgery is successful,” Bo suddenly speaks up, and even Lukas jumps a little in surprise by the sternness in his voice.

   “Bo,” Sally murmurs softly, eyes turning sad and hesitant, but Bo shakes his head and looks up at Melody, their waitress and long-time family friend. “Bo, you know what the doctor said.”

   “I also know that, that doctor is a blubbering idiot,” Bo says angrily, roughly, and Sally closes her eyes with another pound from her never-ending headache. “We should have gone through with the surgery before we agreed to do any kind of chemo or radiation. It was wasted time and only made you sicker.”

   “I’m not talking about this here,” Sally sharply says, and Lukas’ eyes snap up to her in surprise, never having heard her talk so sternly before. She always talked slow and sweet and calm, anything but that left Lukas’ skin crawling with unease. Her eyes turn to Melody, lips drawn into a firm line as she tells her that they all will be having their usual. Tensely, Melody jots it down on her notepad then hurries away towards the kitchens.

    “Sally-”

   “No.” Her voice is ringing with finality again and she tucks all the menus back into the sticky holder on the table. “If you want to talk about this we can later, but not here and certainly not in front of Lukas. Do not bring it up again.”

   The muscle in Bo’s jaw twitches, but his mouth stays firmly shut and he takes a long sip of the black coffee he ordered as Sally turns back down to her son and plays tic-tac-toe with him on his coloring sheet.

   Bo stares at his son and wife sitting together in the torn booth together, and he wishes Sally could understand he was just terrified of losing her and leaving him and Lukas all alone. Deep down he knows she knows that, and maybe she refuses to acknowledge that just as much as he refuses to acknowledge that his wife’s days are dwindling down and without immediate help that actually worked she would eventually run out of them.

   He secretly watches as Sally and Lukas sneak more sugar packets, giggling all the while, and he hopes that the happiness and the sugar packets tucked away inside their pockets gives Sally strength and adds months and years to her limited number of days.

    *******

   That year, they spend Thanksgiving in a hospital room with nearly stale turkey sandwiches and the relief that Sally’s last-minute surgery had been a success. Sally lies in her hospital bed, mourning for the loss of her breasts but rejoices for the loss of the tumor that took them from her, and the brightening hope that she will live to see Lukas’ two front teeth grow in after all. Bo sits beside her bed with little breaks, and Lukas spends his time blowing up doctor gloves and making them into hand turkey’s. He makes enough of them to name each glove after their turkey’s back at home, and Sally laughs and laughs and laughs while she allows herself to feel a kind of hope she never let herself feel since the doctor told her she had breast cancer. Bo’s rough hand in hers seems less like a lifeline now, and more like a casual touch that still gives her the same rush in her head that she felt in high school with him.

   The rest of the Waldenbeck family comes to visit her in small groups, broken up by stubborn nurses that say she can’t have more than five people in her room at a time; and even that number is pushing it. But Sally is happy to see them all, and Bo is able to keep up more conversation with them since her diagnosis which just shows how far his relief goes, and Lukas spends time with his closest cousin Brenda Lee, playing with his blown up glove turkeys.

   Sally is kept in the hospital another week to monitor her health, and when the cancer doesn’t spread further and the doctors’ find no remnants of tumor left inside her breast tissue, they let her go home with her family cancer free.

    *******

   Sally doesn’t live to see Lukas’ sixth Christmas.

   It’s the twelfth of December and Bo and Lukas are sitting out in the hospital waiting room again, listening to a doctor explain that Sally’s chances of making it through the night were less than twenty percent.

   The morning had started off as normal. Sally woke up feeling good and so she made a big breakfast for them all before Bo went out to work and Lukas went outside to ride the small motorbike they had given him as an early Christmas present when he and Sally feared she wouldn’t be around for Christmas. Then, at some point in the afternoon, Lukas had went back inside for a snack and found Sally on the floor beside the couch, almost completely non-responsive. Terrified, Lukas had run outside to get Bo and they took her to the hospital as soon as Bo had her lying in the back of the truck, this time, hardly managing to breathe on her own.

   “The surgery was a success, but the chemotherapy didn’t do what we had thought it did,” the doctor explains, voice non-sympathetic and strictly business. Bo wants to punch him in the face for it, but more than anything he wants to go see his wife and hold her and let her hold her son. “It spread to her lymph nodes, and unfortunately, it all happened too quickly for us to even try to catch it in time.”

   “You should have tried more,” Bo spits, and his face and eyes are red, and Lukas is pressing his face into his hip, little hands shaking and clutching at his jeans as he tries to comprehend what the doctor means by his mama isn’t coming home. “You said she was cancer free! You told her that she was going to be okay!”

   “Things like this are not always definite, Mr. Waldenbeck,” the doctor says, and when his dark eyes focus down on Lukas, his tone turns just a little bit more sympathetic. “I’m very sorry, but there really isn’t anything we can do. She’s awake now, but she’s having trouble breathing so a machine is doing most of the work. She won’t be able to talk much.”

   "Just let me see my wife. Please." 

   “Of course. Right this way.” The doctor leads Bo and Lukas through confusing twists and turns of the hallway, and with each turn, Lukas half expects to bump into his smiling and laughing mama, but it never happens. Instead they turn into a room where he sees his mama lying in bed, her eyes closed and her face back to that horrible white color that Lukas always colors his snow as on his Christmas pictures; that color doesn’t belong on his mama’s face.

   “Sally,” Bo says, his voice choked and more tears are already slipping down his face. “Honey, Lukas and I are here.”

   “Luka?” Sally murmurs, her voice muffled by the mask that covers it, and Lukas wants to take it off so he can hear her better and so she doesn’t look so scary. Or, maybe, she doesn’t really look scary, but something about the mask covering her mouth is scary. He doesn’t like it. “Luka, come her, love.”

   Lukas stumbles up to her bed and she has him crawl up next to her, nuzzled up against her flat chest so he can feel it rise and fall against his cheek. Her hand cards through his hair, and it’s just as warm as it always it, but her slender fingers are trembling again, and he can feel warm tears soaking into his hair.

   “Don’t cry, Mama,” he sniffles into her hospital gown, but his words seem to do the opposite of what he wanted to. Her chest heaves beneath his face with sobs, but she presses Lukas closer against her while Bo hovers above them both, his own fingers sliding through Sally’s curly hair, weeping for the wife he knows he’s already lost.

    Then suddenly, instead of sobs leaving Sally’s mouth, it’s quiet, shaking words that wash over Lukas and leave him comforted and reassured despite the utter wrongness of the situation. She recites his favorite bedtime story into his hair, her hand steady again as it rubs his back, and she’s kept part of her promise, the best she can. She tells him the same story of Goodnight Moon as many times as it takes for Lukas to fall asleep against her, his hand curled up inside hers. He stays there for an hour until Bo has to lift him up and set him on a recliner inside the room because Sally’s battle for breath is getting harder, and she knows it’s going to be a losing one on her part. She doesn’t want Lukas pressed to her chest when it stops moving; the mere thought of her baby still clutching onto her body with no soul inside it leaves her sobbing all over again. She clutches onto Bo’s rough, large hand the entire night and Lukas doesn’t wake and Bo never sleeps.

   Sally Waldenbeck passes away at 6:48 A.M. on the thirteenth of December with her husband’s warm hand still in hers, and her son sleeping peacefully in the recliner with the echo of her soft voice murmuring ‘goodnight moon’ in his ear over and over again.

*******

   “Mama isn’t coming back, Lukas,” Bo explains to him at seven in the morning, barely twenty minutes after she flat-lined and the doctors’ couldn’t bring her back to her weeping husband and wailing child. “She’s gone to be with the angels now.”

   “I don’t want her with the angels!” Lukas screams, clutching at the front of his daddy’s rumpled shirt, his little fists shaking and bottom lip quivering. “I want her here! I want Mama!” Lukas’ big eyes well with tears and he presses his red, blotchy face into his daddy’s belly, sobbing loudly, his whole body heaving with the force of his cries. His daddy crouches down and his arms wrap tightly around him, and Lukas can feel his daddy’s own tears in his hair.

   They stay like that for minutes, and the entire time Lukas cries into his daddy’s shirt, he wishes his mama’s arms are wrapped around him instead of his daddy’s. He doesn’t want his daddy’s comfort, he wants his mama’s but his daddy is telling him she’s never coming back to them. He can’t understand why. He can’t possibly wrap his mind around why God would take his mama away when he still needs her and didn’t want to let her go to the angels yet. He doesn’t understand how God needs her more than he or his daddy does. He just doesn’t understand why his mama had to die.

    “C’mon, Lukas,” Bo sighs once Lukas calms down, and Bo himself feels less like the world is collapsing upon him. He has his son to take care of now, and he promised Sally that he would take care of their son even when he could hardly take care of himself. He wasn’t going to break the only promise Sally needed desperately for him to keep. So, even though Bo wants to fall to his knees and lie there until he joins his beautiful Sally in Heaven, he stands and picks Lukas up with him, cradling his broken boy in his arms. “Let’s go home.”

   “I don’t wanna go home without Mama,” Lukas whimpers into his neck, but he doesn’t lift his head or scream or kick to be let down. Though he doesn’t understand _why_ his mama had to leave, he understands that she did and he understands that she’s not coming back. He’s just stating the thing they’re both thinking, and Bo’s knees shake under the weight of grief at the realization that the home he built with Sally will feel empty and nothing but a house they’re temporarily visiting.

    “I don’t either,” he says softly, and rubs Lukas’ trembling back as he carries him from the hospital. He’d deal with whatever paperwork possibly needed once he has his son home and taken care of as well as he possibly can.

   Lukas doesn’t cry or do much of anything on the way home, and Bo often checks on him through the rearview mirror just to see the same thing. Lukas sitting in the carseat Sally picked out almost as soon as she found out she was pregnant, with his head pressed against the window and staring outside, barely blinking. Bo doesn’t know what to say or what to do for his son that shouldn’t be dealing with the kind of grief no child should go through. But he is and Bo has to help Lukas through his impossible grief before he can even think about nursing his own crippling mourning.

   When he pulls up the gravel driveway, Bo stares up at their house for a long minute, and while he does, Lukas doesn’t make any impatient sounds or movements to be let out of the car. Lukas doesn’t want to go inside any more than Bo does, because the thought of seeing everything _Sally_ without her here is like torture. But Bo fights through the torture and doesn’t let himself scream. He gets his son out of the car and carries him into the house.

   When he steps inside, everything looks the same even while everything is different. Sally’s things are scattered around without a Sally there to scatter them anymore, and Bo’s stomach _turnsandturnsandturns,_ but he doesn’t vomit and he doesn’t let go of Lukas. He carries him into the bathroom, ready to draw Lukas a bath to wash away the scent of hospital, but Lukas suddenly starts kicking and screeching out a steady stream of broken _no’s._

   Bo sets him down out of the shock, and Lukas ducks passed him and into the hallway, standing stubbornly there and looking tearfully up at his daddy. “I want Mama to give me a bath,” he whines, tears slipping down his cheeks again and curling in on himself near the wall. He looks tiny, so scared and like a child that he needs his mother now more than ever, but Bo can’t bring her back, even just for five minutes to tell Lukas that she’s okay and is in a beautiful place called Heaven now and she’ll see him again when the time comes. Bo stands uselessly in the bathroom while his six-year-old son shatters before him like a wounded soldier. “Why did she have to die?”

   “She was- I don’t know,” Bo tells him honestly, and a strangled sob leaves Lukas’ mouth, and that gets Bo’s feet moving. He kneels down on the hardwood floor next to Lukas, and brings him into another hug. “But there is a reason, even if we don’t know it, Lukas. Nothing happens without purpose.”

   “I don’t care!” Lukas shouts, struggling in Bo’s hold, but Bo doesn’t let him go to just suffer in his grief all alone. “I want her back! I want- I wish it was me instead!”

   “Don’t you ever say that, Lukas,” Bo tells him sternly and just pulls his son closer to his aching chest. The thought of losing Lukas too has Bo choking on a sob he can’t hold back this time, and he runs his fingers through Lukas’ soft blonde hair. “Mama wouldn’t want to hear you say that, she would never ever want to hear that. And I don’t want to hear it either, so don’t. Don’t ever talk like that again.”

   “I’m sorry, Daddy,” Lukas whispers into his shoulder, and his struggling slowly ceases until he limply lies in Bo’s strong arms, letting the hold of his daddy comfort him.

   “Mama loves you very much, Lukas. And she’s still watching over you in Heaven, and she’ll always keep you safe. Never ever forget that.”

    Lukas continues to cry into his daddy’s neck for possibly hours, but his daddy’s strong, loving hold on him never falters and he talks about Mama for as long as Lukas cries. His daddy isn’t anything like his mama, his hold is a little too tight and he smells too much like the work he does outside, but it isn’t any less comforting. It isn’t the same, and it won’t ever be the same again, but it’s enough. It isn’t how Lukas wishes it is, with his mama still alive and loving him here, but he knows his mama is still loving him from somewhere he can’t get to yet, and that’s enough.

*******

   On the day of Sally Waldenbeck’s funeral, it’s sunny outside, just the way she always liked it. She always said the sunshine makes the people the happiest and she likes it when people are happy, so with the sun shining down on Lukas that afternoon, he does his best to be happy for his mama. It’s hard. He keeps losing his happiness to tears as the preacher in front of his mama grave talks about her life, but he tries. He tries to smile when a thing his mama loved is mentioned, like apple pie or her favorite sundress or daddy or him.

   All his favorite aunties and uncles are crying around him, but they all still come forward to hold Lukas close to them and Auntie Val reaches out for Daddy’s hand while his mama is lowered into the ground, and his daddy hugs Lukas close to his side. Lukas has to turn and hide his face into his daddy’s hip when his mama is lowered before something about it doesn’t feel right, but he doesn’t cry like Daddy does.

   “Is there anything anyone would like to say?” the preacher asks once he closes his Bible and finishes with the main service. At first no one makes a move to say anything, because they’re all staring at the gaping hole in the ground that Sally shouldn’t be placed into yet, but she is, no matter how hard that is to accept.

   “Sally was the kindest person I had ever known,” Auntie Val speaks up beside Bo, her hand still clutching tightly onto his, reaching comfort from him and him reaching for comfort from her. “I’m lucky enough to be able to call her my sister. I got-” Her breath catches in her throat and she tucks a strand of wild hair behind her ear, that’s so similar to Sally’s, before continuing. “I was practically raised by her when our mother checked out after Dad’s passing. I will always be grateful for her and the way she basically threw away her teenage years to raise Emily and I.” She sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand even as she huffs out a quiet laugh, a sense of happiness flooding through her as memories come forth at lightning speed. “I remember when she told me that she was pregnant with little Lukas here.” Lukas looks up at her, and Auntie Val meets his eyes with a warm smile. “She told me how excited she was to have a baby, and how all she ever wanted to do was give him the kind of life she never got. And she did, she gave Lukas here the best life possible and I know she’ll continue to watch over him and protect him just as fiercely as she did when she was here.”

   She lets go of Bo’s hand to walk over to Lukas, and she crouches down in the grass that will probably stain her nice dress, but she hugs Lukas tightly while others start to talk about his mama. Auntie Val hugs just like Mama did, and Lukas buries his face in her hair as he cries for a loss he’ll never fully understand and an ache that will never fully leave him until he’s reunited with his mama and is held in her arms again.

   Bo doesn’t say anything about Sally. He stands there, staring at her headstone as others around him speak about his wife. He listens to their words and his son’s sobs that are muffled into Val’s curly hair. He thinks of all the things he wants to say, but he never opens his mouth to speak them aloud even when everyone around him stops speaking to start weeping. There are some things he wants to keep to himself, but mostly, he just can’t open his mouth to speak because he still can’t bear the thought of putting Sally’s life into past tense. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to.

   When Lukas and Bo leave the graveyard, Lukas can’t help but look over his shoulder as they do. He’s often been told not to look back on the things he’s leaving behind, but this time he’s glad that he does. Though his mama’s grave looks lonesome without family yet surrounding her, it doesn’t make his heart swell with pain. He knows she’s not alone where she is, and he and Daddy aren’t alone either, even if it might take a little while to feel somewhat whole without her physical presence again.

   When Lukas starts to look away, in the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of Mama’s silhouette sitting on her gravestone, watching him and Daddy go, but Lukas can tell she’s not sad or lonely or angry. Lukas takes comfort in that and tucks the feeling of happiness by acceptance close to his heart, and he doesn’t let it go. His Mama loves him and that’s the one thing he’ll never doubt. 


	2. Broken Bones and Plaguing Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas gets into an accident while practicing tricks on his motorcycle. And while he's recovering, he tries to bury thoughts he never wanted to have.

Part Two  
“There’s a new disease in me”  
Masterpiece Theater III by Marianas Trench 

Eighth grade, from the get-go, was extremely difficult. Classes were getting to the point where teachers would lose him half way through their lecture, especially algebra. Lukas was never a fan of math, even when the hardest thing to do was multiply and divide, but now that letters were thrown into equations, the last thing he wanted to do was sit for a couple hours and solve pointless equations; not when he could be spending time outside riding his dirt bike around his self-made practice course. 

It wasn’t only the classes that were difficult, it was the people and his own changing attractions and emotions that he couldn’t fully grasp or comprehend. When he observed the behaviors of other guys in his classes, they would eye the girls up and down as if they were some kind of masterpiece that deserved to be ogled at for hours on end. When Lukas passed those same girls in the hallways, he never cared much for their looks or their sweet smelling perfumes and shampoos. He always seemed to notice the strong structure of another guy’s jaw and filling shoulders over the swelling of the girls breasts or curvature of their hips. He never paid too much mind to it though. He just thought he was a late bloomer, like the few other guys at his school that cared more about grades than getting to second base with Angie Scott in the back of dad’s pickup truck. Or, he could be comparing himself to the other boys at his school and wondering if he was starting to look as good as them, because there were a few that were starting to look really good. Like Dylan Hemsworth in his English class that always seemed to make it difficult to concentrate on The Outsiders. 

If class difficulties and certain distractions by his fellow students weren’t enough, there was also his growing motocross career that he had to be practicing for daily. His dad never complained about him wanting to go outside and ride around and do new tricks he learned about, so Lukas never cared much about spending two hours of his afternoon after school doing homework that was never going to affect his future in the circuit. Eventually, teachers even stopped asking questions or sending his dad notes about his unfinished homework, and his dad stopped getting onto him about it. And that was how Lukas wanted it to stay. 

It was Thursday in the middle of February and the cold still burned Lukas’ lungs when he first stepped outside to practice. A test in both his math and science class was scheduled for the next day, but instead of studying, Lukas wanted to practice for the race that was coming up next weekend. He didn’t have time for confusing equations and scientific dates and scientist names that he couldn’t possibly care less about, not when sponsors were starting to watch him like vultures on the circuit. 

“I’m going out to practice,” Lukas says from the doorway while he’s pulling on his coat and boots. His dad is sitting at the dinner table, doing the taxes or paying other farm expenses, but whatever it is he’s doing, he doesn’t care enough to look up and give Lukas a verbal answer. Lukas takes his small wave as permission enough and he bolts out the door and through the slippery snow that’s still coating the ground. He stops in the shed where he keeps his bike (a 85cc 2-stroke that he’s had since he was 10), and he drives it out to his favorite area to try out jumps and flips; just a little ways away from his dad’s cabin in the woods. 

Everything is going well at first. He’s mastered the jump required for this weekend’s circuit and now he’s working on other showy jumps that will get him bonus points if he nails them during competition. But, when he lands a jump sloppily and he jerks the steering handles of his bike just a little too forcefully to correct it, his bike skids across the snow on the side of the hill until Lukas loses control and crashes to the ground in a heap with his bike a little less than a foot away from him. He’s crashed a number of times before, especially during this time of year with all the snow, so he knows it’s best to let go of the bike so it doesn’t end up crushing him. But this time, when he lands, he doesn’t feel the usual ache of newly formed bruises or burning cuts pressing into the dirt and frigid snow. It’s a sharp pain that travels from his elbow all the way to the tips of his fingers, and he shouts with the pain of it. 

When he sits up, it shifts his arm just enough to cause the constant throb to travel up to his shoulder, and tears spring to his eyes when he bites his tongue to keep from sobbing aloud. He knows his dad couldn’t possibly hear him in the house from this far out, riding back to the house isn’t an option, and he left his phone at home to charge. 

“Shit,” he curses, because he knows his dad can’t hear him do it and he’s in a lot of pain and he feels helpless. Walking back would take a little over five minutes, and though that really isn’t a terrible distance, the thought of enduring this kind of pain in his entire arm for five minutes all alone made it feel like he might as well be stranded on an unplotted island. He knows his arm is sprained or broken, he’s not an idiot, and the crushing disappointment that he won’t be able to race at all next weekend with all the practice he’s done is the final push that brings the tears to ultimately spill down his cold, reddened cheeks. 

Dropping out of a motocross race, even if it is for an injury, could kill a rider’s reputation and easily distracted sponsors could turn their judging and calculating (find other word, this isn’t right) eyes to another more promising racer. If it’s a broken arm he’ll have to nurse back to health, he’ll be sitting out at least three races instead of just the one. That time away could cause his name to be completely forgotten and he’ll have to fight tooth and nail to get his current place back. 

When he’s cried most of his frustration out and his very bones might as well be shaking with how cold he is, Lukas decides to make the slow and painful effort to stand and start walking back home. He leaves his bike behind, knowing he or his dad could pick it up later. It takes him ten minutes, with frequent breaks in between because his arm starts throbbing so much he can feel it in his teeth, he makes it home. His dad is still sitting at the dinner table, laptop open and calculator in front of him with scattered papers with rows of numbers printed on them. 

“Back already? It’s only been an hour,” Bo says when he finishes punching whatever he was into the calculator. When he looks up at Lukas, he must be able to tell he’s hurt himself pretty bad because his eyes go wide and he jumps out of his chair. “What did you do?”

“Lost control of the bike. I landed bad on my arm and I think- I’m pretty sure it’s broken,” Lukas replies, and his voice is still tight and choked with tears, but he pretends he doesn’t notice, and his dad pretends right along with him. 

Bo sighs heavily, and when he gently reaches forward to gently pull at Lukas’ arm by the elbow, Lukas cries out immediately and Bo gives him a stern expression. “Don’t cry. The doctors are going to have to pull your arm straight to take X-Rays, so might as well get more used to it now.” When he pulls at it again, Lukas bites the inside of his cheek so hard he can taste the bitterness of blood and tears are blurring his dad’s face so much he looks distorted. 

Once his dad is satisfied he’d found whatever he was looking for, he let Lukas’ arm go and he immediately cradled it to his chest again. 

“C’mon, we have to go to the hospital. That is definitely broken.” 

“But, Dad, what about my race next weekend? Some of the biggest sponsor’s are going to be there! I can’t miss this race!” 

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been so careless with your practicing today you wouldn’t have been forced to miss it.” 

Lukas frowns up at his dad, but falls silent and didn’t bother with arguing with him. It wasn’t fair though, to be accused of being careless when his dad knows that he was always careful when he was practicing, especially in the snow. He knows how dangerous motocross was; he’s been racing since he was six, of course he knows how dangerous it is, and he would never let cockiness of his talents override his cautiousness at home or on the real track. It had been an accident, plain and simple, and that accident was now costing him the possibility of a sponsor picking him up. Lukas already felt bad enough without his dad giving him grief for his mistake. 

***

They have to drive all the way to Poughkeepsie to go to an emergency room; Tivoli is still too small for a hospital or even small emergency room. Though Lukas doesn’t remember anything else about his mother than that she smelled good, like cinnamon, he does remember coming here for all her appointments, surgery, and her death. A hospital was one of the places he never wanted to go to, and he wondered if his father shared the same sentiment as he did. But, when they got out of the SUV and started making their way to the emergency room doors, his dad showed no discomfort or sadness over being at the place he’d last seen his wife alive. Lukas tried his best to ignore it as well, and well, the pain helped a lot with that task. 

He and his dad sat in the bustling emergency room for an hour and a half until a nurse finally calls for him. They’re led through confusing hallways, to an elevator, and through more confusing hallways until they reach an area where Lukas is told to take his watch off and anything metal he had on and that his dad will have to wait for them out in the waiting area.   
Lukas furrows his eyebrows and looks from the nurse to his father. “He can’t come with me?” he asks the nurse nervously, digging his nails into his palm. He hates hospitals and the last thing he wants to do is go somewhere unknown all alone without his dad. He’s hurt and he just hates hospitals so much. “I- he needs- why can’t he come?” 

The nurse puts a kind hand on his shoulder and smiles. She smells kind of like apples and cinnamon beneath all the chemicals of the hospital, and he feels comforted when a flash of his mother’s frizzy hair and face enters his mind. “We have to go take an X-Ray of that arm to make sure it isn’t just sprained. Unfortunately your dad can’t be in there while we’re taking the X-Ray because of the radiation. We’ll be done in just five minutes and then you can be with your dad again, I promise.” 

“Don’t be scared, Lukas,” Bo says sternly behind him, and Lukas looks up at him over his shoulder. His dad’s face isn’t reassuring or really even kind, but almost like he’s frustrated by his fear of being separated from him. “You’re a big boy now. Just go get this done.” 

Since when was fear not allowed to be felt? Lukas feels scared a lot, and he’s almost always nervous, but maybe that’s girly to feel like that. He doesn’t want to be weak or disappoint his dad because he isn’t brave enough to even go into a different room to get some dumb X-Ray. He already has enough things going against him without being a scaredy cat added to his long list of issues and secret faults that his father can never know, and that Lukas has hardly even had the courage to acknowledge himself yet. 

“Okay,” he says after a beat, because what else could be possibly say? He turns back to the nurse that’s looking at him with some weird expression on her face, and he takes a few steps ahead of her because he doesn’t want to see her look at him like that. She eventually gains the speed to get in front of him, and she leads him to a dark room with a black table in the center and a weird piece of machinery hanging from the ceiling. He’s seen a similar looking machine at the dentist office when he’s getting his teeth X-Rayed, but this one looks bigger, scarier, and this time he’s in a dark room all alone. 

“Okay, Lukas, I need you to sit at that table over there for me,” she says, and her voice is still kind and patient, much unlike his dad’s. Without all the chemicals surrounding them now, he can smell her a lot better, and he wonders if his mother would have been as patient with him as this nurse is being. He wonders if she would have rushed him to the hospital without having to stretch out his arm like his dad was, as if he was checking that Lukas wasn’t lying, or if she would have comforted him about missing his race instead of accusing him of being careless. 

He doesn’t have a lot longer to dwell on it because the nurse is gently ushering him to the table and sitting him down on a chair before settling a heavy kind of weird apron over his torso. He wears something similar at the dentist, and to be honest, the weight of it against him is a little comforting. It’s almost like a hug or the heavy comforter he sleeps with during the winter. 

“Now, Lukas, I’m going to have to stretch out your arm in order to do this. It’ll be painful, but I promise you I won’t let it go longer than five seconds. Can you trust me?” 

He isn’t too sure if he can trust her, but this is the nurse’s job and she’s at least treating him kindly. He nods at her, and she looks towards a window on the far wall of the room where a doctor is standing in another room. With a small nod, the nurse next to him reaches forward and places his injured arm over a specific place on the table before stretching it out, slowly and carefully. Lukas wants to cry, but he bites it back like his father had him do in the kitchen, and the pain lasts for what feels like minutes. But when the doctor and nurse have what they need, she immediately lets him guide his arm back to his chest and she gives him an apologetic smile. “It’s unpleasant, I know, I’ve had to do it before myself. But you did very well! You didn’t even cry, I’m surprised. Most boys your age actually do,” she says with a cheeky little wink, and it makes him feel better. Maybe he isn’t as weak as his father thinks he is; at least he’s able to hold back tears when other guys his age can’t. 

“The hard part is over, I promise. I’m going to bring you back to your dad and have you wait in a room while we look at the X-Ray. If your arm is broken you’ll get to pick a cool color for a cast, and if it’s just sprained you’ll have to wear a sling for a couple weeks.” The nurse lifts the heavy apron thing off of him and the brings him out of the room and back down to where his dad is waiting for him. His dad doesn’t look worried, and when Lukas is walking alongside him to the room, his dad doesn’t say that he did a good job or anything. But Bo Waldenbeck is the type of man that believes no real man should ever show any signs of weakness. Lukas can’t remember much at all from when his mom was alive, but he’s sure that his dad used to be less strict and not as bad at communicating. 

Lukas and his dad never talk. Well, not like the other guys in his class can talk to their dads or moms at least. Lukas has never gone to his dad for comfort or advice for anything besides motocross because he never felt that his dad would ever want to hear about it. His dad wasn’t an emotional person, and he was just as bad at talking as Lukas was. Because of that communication between them was never good and Lukas can tell their relationship is getting more and more strained with each year. 

“You two can wait in here while Dr. Bunnell and I look over Lukas’ X-Rays. While you’re waiting, go ahead and be thinking about what color you’ll want for your cast,” she says to Lukas right before she steps out of the room and lets the door close and lock behind her. Lukas sits down on the medical bed with the crinkly paper, and he and his dad just sit in the room in silence for a few minutes. 

“What happened, Lukas? On your bike?” 

“I overcorrected when I landed bad on a jump. Because of the snow the back tire skid and flipped the bike. I jumped off before it could crush me and I just landed wrong,” Lukas said with a shrug, then looked up at his dad with his mouth in a thin line. “I’m not careless when I ride. Riders get injured all the time, and not because they’re being careless.” 

“What was I supposed to think? You’ve been winning first place every race and you’ve already got potential sponsors. You’re only thirteen, Lukas, all this attention can go straight to your head.” 

“But it’s not,” Lukas replies firmly. He’s not cocky, he’s confident, he knows the difference. He’s not invincible or unbeatable, and he knows that. He screws up a lot and he has to practice complicated jumps every day or he’ll get sloppy and forget how to do them. He’s not a natural-born prodigy of motocross, and if he was maybe he’d be cocky about it, but he’s not. He doesn’t want his dad to think he is either, he just wants him to be proud of him and all his hard work. 

The nurse and the doctor walk back inside the room before his dad can yell at him for talking back. “Well, bad news is that it’s broken,” Dr. Bunnell says instead of the nurse that Lukas still doesn’t know the name of. “Good news is that it’s just a small fracture and your wrist should be as good as new in just three weeks compared to a typical six. Did you decide on a color?” 

“Just green is fine,” Lukas says with a shrug. He’s honestly more concerned about missing a total of three races while his arm is in a stupid cast, but he guesses it is better than missing six races instead. 

Lukas sits patiently and obediently as the doctor applies his cast and listens to the nurse as she explains that they’re going to be putting him on the lowest dosage of Norco for pain, and instructs Lukas to take one to two tablets every four to six hours as needed for pain. Because of the pain medication that they will be putting him on, they’ll give him four days worth of school excused doctor’s notes. Once the cast is securely on his arm, Dr. Bunnell writes out the doctor’s notes and Lukas’ prescription that he tells Bo he can pick up at the local CVS in the next fifteen minutes. 

***

The next day, Lukas is still lying in bed even though it’s past three in the afternoon, but his head feels fuzzy from the painkillers he took just the hour before when he was eating his late lunch with his dad. He doesn’t sleep, despite feeling tired enough to, but instead he’s watching Friends on the television his dad finally put in his room just last month.   
“Hey, Lukas,” he hears suddenly from his doorway, and he turns to see Angie Scott standing there with a thin folder of homework in her arms. She’s the girl in the majority of his classes, and she also lives closest to him, so he wouldn’t be surprised that she volunteered to bring him all his missed work. She’s a nice girl from what Lukas could tell after years of attending school with her, but she was also known around school for having a loose reputation with boys. He believes most of the rumors, especially after Chad came to his house in the middle of the night a couple months ago and told him eagerly that he’d fooled around with her underneath the bleachers during a football game. Lukas couldn’t care less that she fools around with most of the guys at school, even though most of his male classmates would jump at any opportunity she would give them. 

“Hey, Angie,” he greets back and works on sitting up a little further, which is a difficult task with just the aid of his left arm. “Thanks for bringing over my homework. Did our teachers say anything about my six weeks tests?” 

“Yeah, actually. You can take them all on the day you get back and you’ll be excused from any work done in the classrooms on that day. But this homework has to be done by the time you come back, unless stated otherwise.” 

“Great, the teachers are already up my ass,” he grumbled under his breath, and he normally would have thought of saying something witty to follow up his statement, but the pain meds were making his social awkwardness even worse. “You can just leave it on my desk. I’ll get to it.” 

“Oh, but Mrs. Martin said I need to help you copy down some notes and work on the set of practice problems from today’s lesson. You know how she can be,” Angie says with a roll of her eyes before she pulls off her backpack and plops herself down onto the edge of his bed. She pulls out her own math binder and takes out the notes and practice problems they must have worked on in class that day. “You want to work at your desk or here?” 

“Let’s just work here. I don’t want to have to get up.” He takes the blank sheet of notes from her as well as a binder and pencil for him to work with. They work together well for the first ten minutes or so, and Lukas just concentrates on what he needs to get down and try to understand, but it’s hard with the pain medication making him feel like he has a head cold. 

Then, he could smell her perfume growing stronger each time she scooted across his bed sheets until their thighs were touching. And her hand would ghost across his every so often when she would point something out on the paper that he was writing down wrong or when he skipped a word vital to the definition of a vocabulary word. He tried to ignore it, and just told himself that she was being friendly and making sure that he wasn’t going to screw himself over with incorrect information. “Sorry,” he apologizes after erasing another word for what felt like the hundredth time. “The pain meds I’m on are making me all kinds of spaced out.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she says airily, waving her hand in a sort of dismissive gesture, “it must have been really scary to break your arm. You do motocross, right? It must get really dangerous.” Her hand moves away from his paper and it’s suddenly sliding up the hard texture of his green cast up to the bare skin on his forearm, her fingers tickling him. 

“Yeah, it can get pretty dangerous. But that’s all part of it, you know?” he says, looking stubbornly at the notes in his lap. He didn’t want to believe that she was flirting with him, and that she was just concerned, but her voice was getting softer, slower and she was looking up at him through her painted eyelashes. 

“I’m sure,” she says, and suddenly, she’s pushing the binders and notes and pencils off his lap until she’s replaced them, her thighs straddling his thin waist and her breasts are pressing up against his chest. “Maybe I should kiss it better?” She’s looking down at him with dark eyes, her brown hair is framing her pale face and she does look really pretty, and Lukas should be eagerly leaning up to accept her healing kiss, but his stomach is in knots and squirming like it does right before he pukes and his heart is racing sickly in his chest. 

She doesn’t wait for an answer before her lipstick sticky lips are covering his chapped ones. He doesn’t understand what kind of invitation he could have given her, but maybe she took his stunned silence and racing heart as a sign to keep going, but the last thing he wants is her body any closer to his or her lips pressed onto his for another second. So, he shoves her away with his good arm and she scrambles to catch her footing before she can bust her ass on the hardwood floor. 

“What the hell, Lukas?!” she shouts, hands shooting out to grip onto the edge of his desk so she doesn’t continue falling backwards. Her hair is in a mess, her lipstick is smudged from his effort to wrench her lips away, and her face is completely red in anger. “What’s your damage?”

Lukas opened his mouth to respond, but even in the best of times words don’t come easily to him, so when he’s feeling panicked and cornered and confused, the last thing he wants to try and do is talk like a normal, functioning human being. “It- you just-” he tries, but his voice cracks somewhere in the middle and that just makes everything ten times worse. What the hell was he supposed to say? That he didn’t want to kiss her? That her kiss didn’t make him feel anything except maybe a slightly bit sick? Well, if she wanted to hear the truth he could, but Lukas isn’t too sure he wants to hear the truth aloud himself. Maybe it was just her. Maybe he just didn’t want to kiss her. It didn’t have to do because she was a girl, it just had to do because he didn’t know how many people had kissed her or even had sex with her. It must have been because he just didn’t like-

“What, you gay or something?!” she suddenly screams, and something inside Lukas just short circuits because all he can do is stare wide-eyed at her while the word gay bounces off the walls of his brain until it makes him feel dizzy. “Whatever! All the other guys at school like me, I don’t need you! Good luck with your stupid homework, I am never coming over here again!” With that, she picks up her backpack and storms out of his bedroom. He can hear her stomps down the stairs and out onto the porch, and he listens closely until he can’t hear her anymore. 

Whatever. It- what happened with Angie was just a fluke. So what if he wasn’t into her when all the other guys were? He just didn’t want some easy girl who would straddle any guy's’ lap and make out with them until they were swapping herpes instead of spit. It didn’t have to do because he didn’t like the feeling of her softer, curvier body pressing down against his. It didn’t have anything to do with her sweet smelling perfume that left him feeling suffocated by artificial strawberries. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she was a girl, it just had to do with the type of girl he was. 

When Lukas falls asleep later on that night, he goes to sleep with his lips red and raw from how much he’d scrubbed them while he was in the shower, and still feeling unsatisfied even when they started bleeding because it was like they’d never be clean. But it wasn’t because she was a girl, it was because of how many boys she’s kissed in the past. That was all it was. 

***

Lukas sighed and slumped into his chair as another kid from his fourth period class walked away from his desk after signing his cast. It was only half way through fourth period and his cast was already almost completely covered in names, even by some people that he’d never talked to before. It wasn’t that he hated the attention or getting people to sign his cast, it just took a lot of energy to try and spark up conversations with every person that came by to ask him what happened, how it happened, how long his cast was on, and if they could sign it. Lukas was quiet by nature, and the amount of socialness he’d experienced in just the past four hours was ridiculous. 

“Hey, Lukas. Sorry about your arm; you’ll end up missing that big race this weekend won’t you?” Lukas opened his eyes when he heard somebody talking to him again, and he was slightly surprised to see Dylan Curtis standing in front of him. Dylan Curtis was one of the popular kids in eighth grade, but he wasn’t wrapped up in Lukas’ circle, even though he himself was popular. Dylan hung out mostly with the football players while Lukas hung out with the select few of motocross racers, track runners, and softball girls. His and Dylan’s groups just never talked much to one another even if no animosity was held between them. 

“Yeah, man, it sucks,” he says, lifting his messily signed cast. “But I’ve already got a few sponsors keeping their eyes on me so it shouldn’t be so bad if I miss a few races. Besides, once I get old enough to start doing freestyle, too, it’ll be hard to ignore me.” 

That got a laugh out of Dylan, and his laugh did something weird to Lukas’ stomach. It wasn’t that twisted, nauseas feeling he got when Angie got all up on him six days ago, it was something lighter and one of those flutters he would get right before a race he was confident in winning. He ignored the feeling though and just concentrated on whatever it was Dylan was fixing to say. “Freestyle is pretty dangerous, but it always looks cool when those guys do it. I bet you’ll kick some ass, Waldenbeck.” Dylan pauses, and Lukas is thankful for the pause because now his heart is doing weird flips in his chest and he’s starting to feel nervous with Dylan’s eyes on him. He wants Dylan to leave but wants him to stay and keep talking to him which is the weirdest combination and it makes Lukas want to get up and run so he doesn’t have to deal with the conflicting emotions. 

“Mind if I sign your cast? If you’ve got some girls you want to sign it instead though I get it, it looks like you’re running out of room.” 

“No!” Lukas nearly shouts, and he wants to run away all over again because why is he making more of a fool of himself than usual. He’s always been bad with people skills and talking to others, but he’s never nearly screamed in their faces in an attempt to get them to stay even when he wants them to leave all at the same time. “I mean, all the girls signed it already. They’re all acting weird because of my cast, like it’s super cool I’ve got it. So, yeah- sign. If you want, I mean, obviously.” Okay, he needs to shut the hell up now. 

“Uh, right,” Dylan says, and Lukas wants to slam his head into a church window because he’s gone and made Dylan all uncomfortable even though Lukas is the one being an awkward freak. “You got a Sharpie?” 

“Oh, yeah, here,” Lukas says and hands him the black Sharpie mostly everyone else has been using. When he hands it to him the tips of their fingers brush and it sends weird tingles through his fingers until they travel through his entire body and make his ears blush. He’s grateful his hair is covering them. 

“Thanks, dude.” Dylan uncaps the Sharpie and starts scribbling his name onto his cast, next to the hole for his thumb, and Lukas is watching his hand move captivatingly until he’s finished the ‘n’ of his name. When Dylan hands him back the marker, the shrilled question Angie asked him before she stormed out the other day is taking over his mind again and is making him want to scrub his lips with a bar of soap. And maybe his own brain. “Well, hope you feel better soon, Lukas.” Dylan walks away from him finally, and Lukas is focusing on the way his name sounded coming out of Dylan’s mouth. 

For the rest of that class period Lukas’ eyes keep drifting to Dylan’s name scratched onto his green cast. In fifth period he’s thinking about the way he felt when Dylan’s hand brushed his and how he felt when he was just standing near him. During lunch he’s able to distract himself when he’s bombarded with questions about his accident, and for the first time in his life, Lukas is thankful for being forced to talk to people. In sixth period he thinks about how he felt when Angie touched him, sat on his lap, and kissed him. In seventh period he compares how he felt with Angie and with Dylan just talking to him, and when he comes to his conclusion he wants to crawl into a hole and die. In eighth period, he thinks about Angie’s question about if he’s gay and if he would be forced to answer that question with a resounding yes, and even in his own mind Lukas wants to scream a litany of no’s until he can believe it. 

***

Lukas’ shyness around Dylan Curtis has not ebbed away in the least over the last two weeks. He never avoided Dylan, at least not to the point of turning and walking in the opposite direction in the hallway if he saw him coming. But he never deliberately searches him out in the crowded hallways or lunchroom even though he does like seeing him and talking to him. It’s a complicated set of feelings and Lukas still doesn’t know how to explain them, even to himself. He thinks it’s something like a crush, but it couldn’t possibly be a crush because in order for these feelings to be a crush, he had to like Dylan more than a friend and that would mean he liked all boys and he was gay. Lukas wasn’t gay he was just- he just wasn’t interested in girls and still thought guys were cooler to hang around. That was all. Dylan was just somebody cool that he wanted to hang out with more. 

His avoiding-but-not-avoiding plan goes well for those two weeks until he’s forced to ride the bus home one afternoon. His dad has to go to Poughkeepsie for some kind of farm part he needs, and since he can’t ride his bike home because of his cast, Lukas is forced to take the stupid old bus home that still doesn’t have an AC installed because Red Hook Middle School is cheap. 

He climbs onto the bus and picks a seat farther in the back that is unoccupied, and he sits there as comfortably as he can with his shirt sticking to his back from sweat and his broken arm itching crazily underneath his unbearably hot cast. Then, he spots Dylan walking down the tiny isle of the bus and before he sits in the seat right in front of Lukas he lifts his chin in an upwards nod of greeting in Lukas’ direction. Lukas waves back awkwardly, and can feel the stupid fluttering in his stomach again from something as little and insignificant as a nod. Lukas looks out his grimy window to distract himself. 

Halfway through the bus ride, Lukas forgets about Dylan’s presence for the most part until he catches movement from the corner of his eye. He looks towards the movement by reflex, and regrets it almost as soon as he does. Dylan is still sitting in front of him and pulling his shirt off over his head, leaving his dark brown hair a mess on his head. He’s still wearing a white tank top, but Lukas is almost positive Dylan being completely shirtless would have been less distracting. 

The white cotton of the tank top contrasts with the darkness of his complexion, and the sweat glistening on his shoulders. He follows the trail of sweat that rolls across Dylan’s dark skin until it disappears from his field of vision behind the torn up seat. When he lifts his gaze again, Dylan is rolling his shoulders and his gaze fixes to the prominent muscles on Dylan’s shoulder blades, and Lukas wonders what they might feel like beneath his touch or his tongue. Then, with a wrenching quiet gasp, Lukas tears his eyes away and concentrates on the rolling fields and wonders what the hell is happening to him. Never in his life before had he stared at someone so intently and- and lustfully. Lukas had never had those kinds of thoughts before in his life, but they were suddenly awoken by Dylan Curtis, a guy, who was just understandably trying to escape the overbearing heat. He wasn’t doing anything wrong or sexual about it, but still, Lukas had been looking and thinking about him as if he was giving him some kind of show. 

Lukas keeps his gaze locked firmly outside, even when he catches the slightest of movements from the corner of his eye and is tempted to turn around and look again. But, he doesn’t because he needs to keep whatever feelings and thoughts he’d just let escape his careful hold. He needs to keep those emotions and feelings buried deep within himself. He can’t afford to let them out and think the way he just did. He can’t afford to be different, he can’t be that guy who likes other boys. So he won’t be that guy, nobody wants him to be that guy. 

When the bus stops in front of his house, Lukas gets off without looking or saying anything to Dylan. If he were to turn around and look he’s not so sure he’ll be able to keep his thoughts under control, especially since he’s going home to an empty house and no one to catch him. He goes straight to the AC unit when he gets inside, cranks it up as if that will abate the heat burning just beneath his skin. He goes upstairs to his bedroom after he has the air-conditioning set and takes out his homework in the pretence of being normal. In any other situation riding would clear his head, but with his cast he can’t do the one thing he desperately needs right now. 

“Dammit,” he groans, sitting on his desk chair with defeat, putting his head in his hands. “This can’t be happening. I’m not- I can’t-” He takes a deep breath and looks around his room desperately for something to drown out his panicked thoughts. He reaches for the television remote on his bed, but before he presses the power button he rethinks if TV would really help. It’s hardly distracting on the best of days, and it isn’t nearly enough to douse the screaming thoughts inside his head. But- but music turned up loud enough might. 

Lukas opens one of the drawers of his desk jerkily to pull out his earbuds and his MP3 Player. He shoves the earbuds into his ears and lies down on his twin sized bed, turning up his music as much as he can and closing his eyes, letting the music do its job in drowning out the thoughts. 

***

Lukas’ six weeks tests went about as well as he imagined they would. He failed six out of eight of them, and the two that he did pass it was by sheer luck. He’d been sitting in his English classroom, listening to Mr. Bratton drone on about Shakespearean literature when the intercom overhead clicked on and he was called to the counselor’s office. 

“Ooh, how bad did you fail, Waldenbeck?” Tommy Halperin calls from somewhere up in the front, and Lukas wants to flip him off but Mr. Bratton is following him closely with his beady little eyes. He walks the short distance to his counselor’s office, and when he knocks on the door he’s immediately called inside. 

“I’m sure that you know what this is about, Mr. Waldenbeck,” Mrs. Martinez says to him when he sits down in front of her desk. He doesn’t give her a verbal reply, but she doesn’t seem to need it because she continues talking. “You’ve failed six of your six weeks tests and passed the other two, just barely. Mr. Waldenbeck, I have to wonder if you’re even putting in any effort here. Is there anything going on that is affecting your ability to study or concentrate?” 

“No,” Lukas lies, and really, he’s gotten good enough at lying to himself so being able to look into this lady’s eyes and lie isn’t that much of a difficult task. “Nothing. I’m just- I don’t understand anything.” 

Mrs. Martinez sighs heavily and pushes a small packet towards him across the desk. “Well, if there isn’t anything going on at home or with you there isn’t much I can say in your defense. Do you understand that?” 

“Yeah,” he says quietly with a shrug, staring down at the packet she’s pushing to him. It’s got a note to his dad at the top, and his blood is going cold. His dad is going to kill him. “But. It’s not like I’m slacking; I just don’t understand what is being taught. Why do I have to show this to my dad at all?” 

“Because, Mr. Waldenbeck, you’re going to have to start attending both Saturday school and summer school. With the grades you’ve been making for the past year there isn’t much we can do for you at this point. And even if you do start making A’s on every one of your assignments and tests you would still fail for this year. We need your father to understand what it is that’s going on.” 

Lukas takes a deep breath and nods. There was no walking out of it this time, there was no amount of lies that could save him, either. “Okay. I’ll get him to sign it.” 

“Thank you. I know this is difficult, but we just want you to excel and get to wherever it is you want to go in life.” 

Lukas almost wants to scoff, but he holds it back and he just takes the packet from the counselor. Once he has it tucked away in a folder in his backpack, Mrs. Martinez dismisses him and lets him go back to his class. Lukas goes through the rest of the day in a kind of fog, constantly in a panic over what his dad was going to say about his grades. The day goes by fast, and Lukas is home before he even realizes what is happening. 

He desperately just wants to forge his dad’s signature and bring the packet back to Mrs. Martinez and have her believe that his dad really saw it, but there was no way he could disguise going to Saturday school as well as summer school. Even if he didn’t show his dad this packet now, he would find out one way or another, and if it happened later the fallout would be so much worse. 

“Lukas,” his dad said suddenly, jarring Lukas out of his endless spin of thoughts. “Why are you just standing there? Come inside.” 

“Dad, I need you to sign something. It’s for school.” 

“You going on another field trip? I thought once you got to eighth grade you were done with that.”

“No, it’s. It’s about my grades.” 

Bo pauses with frying the steaks on the stove, and looks at Lukas over his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, and that just makes anxiety stir up in his gut. Lukas isn’t sure what else to say, but his dad is obviously waiting for him to elaborate. “I- my tests didn’t go so good. They’re signing me up for Saturday and summer school.” 

“You’re failing?” Bo asks him sharply, turning off the stove and taking steps closer to Lukas. “How can you be failing? You told me that you were doing fine in all your classes.” 

“I’ve been distracted lately.”

“By what? Your bike? Girls? Friends? Lukas, what’s going on with you? You used to never let your grades slip; you know how important they are for sponsorships. Image is everything in motocross and failing grades is not helping you in the slightest.” 

“I know I just- practicing is important, too. I can’t show up to a race without knowing what I’m doing,” Lukas argues, even though he knows that grades and image are just as important. But the schoolwork was getting more difficult and some of what they were teaching just didn’t seem important to him. Besides, he’d had a lot of other stuff on his mind, but when he could hardly admit it to himself how could he admit it to his dad who would never understand? 

“Well, until you pull those grades up you can forget about practicing everyday-”

“What? Dad, that isn’t fair!” 

“Do not interrupt me again, Lukas, or I’ll take that damn bike away from you altogether.” 

Lukas falls silent, but he diverts his eyes away from his father and glares down at his shoes, his hands balled into fists. He wasn’t just neglecting his schoolwork because he felt like it. He didn’t understand most of the material and, really, motocross and trying to not think about how good Dylan looks in everything he wears are a little more important to him right now.   
“I’m going to be increasing your chores around the farm, but most importantly, you are going to be worrying about your grades. I’m going to make an appointment with your counselor and make sure that you get whatever tutoring you need and have them keep me updated with your grades. This is not an insignificant problem, Lukas. This is your future, so maybe you should start worrying about it a little more. Leave whatever it is I need to sign on the table and then go clean out the chicken coop. As soon as you’re done with that start on your homework.” His dad paused, looked up into Lukas’ eyes with furrowed brows and a deep frown. “I’m very disappointed in you, Lukas.” 

Lukas watched his dad leave the kitchen, probably on his way to make that appointment with Mrs. Martinez. He pulled out the packet and left it on the table like instructed before making his way out towards the chicken coop. He knew that his dad wasn’t out of line with what he said, or overreacting, but Lukas still wanted to find a reason to be mad at him. He decided to be mad at the fact that if his dad cared about him a little more then maybe he would have realized there was something wrong with him, though he knew deep inside that, that wasn’t fair to think. It wasn’t like he gave his dad much of a chance to know what is going on in his mind or life outside of home. 

While Lukas is cleaning out the chicken coop, with a fresh scratch on his right forearm because of an angry hen, he wonders how his mom might have reacted. He wonders that if she was still alive, if she would be disappointed in him, too. Not just because of his grades, but because of everything he seemed to be becoming.


	3. Rodeo Queen and Counterfeit Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas gets his first girlfriend and everything is going good, except for the fact he still feels nothing when he kisses her, despite how pretty she is.

**Part Three**

**Rodeo Queen and Counterfeit Kisses**

**And this is just a part a portray, you’re beautiful, can I hide in you and stay here?**

**Masterpiece Theater II by Marianas Trench**

 

      “Yo, Lukas, I got a proposition for you,” Chad Flenderson, Lukas’ best friend since diapers, says as he sits down next to him at their usual lunch table. Lukas is thankful to hear his voice so he can distract him from the chatter of their other friends around him. Most of the time they never talk about anything he’s really interested in, including softball and baseball and the girls they’ve recently slept with, but Chad and he have similar interests so they often go off into their own world during lunch. “You know how I’ve just started going out with Karin Hudson?”

  Lukas nods, watching as Chad sets his lunch tray on the table and sits down next to him. Karin Hudson is a fellow sophomore who dances ballet and jazz in her free time. She and Chad started to talk when Chad was forced to bring his little sister, Kelly, to ballet practice when their mom was stuck at work. They’d never approached Karin much at school since she didn’t have a lot of friends or talk much, but she was pretty cool and Lukas never minded too much when Chad would start talking about her.

  “Yeah. You’ve talked about her every day for the past two weeks, why are you even asking me that question?” Lukas teases, and laughs when Chad swats at his arm with his cheeks red. “I’m actually surprised you aren’t over sitting with her. You guys okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine. She just told me something I thought you would be interested in hearing.”

   “What?” Lukas asks, looking up at his friend with a raised eyebrow.

   “She has this best friend named Courtney Vance. She doesn’t go here; she lives in Poughkeepsie and barrel races and is single. Karin thought you would be a perfect candidate.”

   Lukas’ stomach does the familiar uncomfortable twist at the mention of going on a date with a girl. It does the same thing when he’s questioned about whether or not he’s had his first kiss or gotten passed second base. He’s gotten more used to it throughout the past year so the squirm doesn’t even make him stop taking another bite of his cheeseburger. “You don’t expect me to go out with a girl I know literally nothing about, do you?” Lukas questions once he’s swallowed his bite. “I’ve got too much work to do and practice to just go out on some date with a girl I don’t even know.”

   “What about a double date with Karin and I? She suggested it since Courtney is really shy. I thought you two would really hit it off.” Chad suddenly leans in closer, and Lukas is tempted to move away from him because he still gets flutters in his chest when a good looking guy gets super close to him, even if he doesn’t feel any kind of weird things for him in the first place. “Plus, Karin showed me a picture of her on her phone. She’s super cute and her chest is pretty flat, which I know you like for some weird reason.”

   Lukas groans and narrows his eyes at Chad. “Why did I ever tell you that?”

   “Because I’m your best bro, man! C’mon, Karin really wants this and I already sort of promised her you would do this.”

   “Okay, first, you’re an dick,” Lukas says, because it’s true. His best friend, Chad Flenderson, is a total dickhead for setting him up for a double date that he didn’t even want in the first place, but Lukas really can’t be mad at him for it. After all, if Lukas was like any other normal guy, he’d be jumping at the opportunity to be going out with a cute girl and Chad really probably thought he was doing him a favor.

   “Duly noted,” Chad cuts in before Lukas can list off the second thing he was going to say. “But I speak ‘Lukas’, so I know you’re going. Anyway, go on.”

   “You’ve graduated from a dick to an asshole,” Lukas jibes, and Chad laughs but doesn’t cut him off again. “And second, I’m pretty sure I did not tell you that because you’re my ‘best bro’. I told you that because you kept pestering me about whether or not I like big or small boobs because you’re an asshole.”

   “Yeah, yeah,” Chad says, waving his hand before picking up his tray and standing. “I’m the biggest asshole for getting you laid. But I’m telling you, man, it’s a match made in Heaven. You’ll love her!” he calls out from halfway across the cafeteria (because again, he’s an asshole) and Lukas wants to sink into the floor when everyone at his table, and a few others, turn to look at him and give him congratulatory hollers even when he hasn’t done anything.

   “Yeah, I’ll love her,” he mutters sarcastically to himself while everyone around him is still telling him ‘way to go’ and ‘knew you had it in you, Waldenbeck’. He hates everyone he goes to school with, and he especially hates the dick he calls his best friend.

   Maybe Courtney really is a nice girl and the type of one he would be totally into if he was normal, but he’s not and he knows he’ll never ‘love’ her the way he’s supposed to and the way everybody around him is expecting him to. But if she is nice enough, maybe he could stand to go on a few dates with her just long enough so people would get off his case about getting a girlfriend. Maybe, just maybe, if he did it long enough he could heal whatever sickness was inside him.

 

*******

 

    “Lukas, thank you so much for doing this,” Karin gushes a couple days later while Chad drives them down the road to Poughkeepsie. Though none of them are old enough to be driving, Chad has driven around his parents’ farm enough to know how to handle a car on the road no problem, and if he gets caught it’ll be his problem. “You have no idea how excited Courtney is. I sent her a picture of you that Chad sent me, and she thinks you’re really cute. She’s been getting ready for hours.”

   “I’m excited to meet her,” Lukas says shortly because he isn’t sure of what else to say (big surprise), and Karin seems just a little put out by his lack of response. He isn’t about to apologize for it though. He doesn’t do well with talking to people and it isn’t like he really is that excited to meet Courtney. It’s a Friday night and he’d much rather be practicing until he can hardly see the track in front of him and then watching the top trending motocross videos of the week.

   They pull up to the small movie theatre in the middle of Poughkeepsie, and Karin immediately points out an army green two-door Jeep that belongs to Courtney. “She’s a total Daddy’s Girl,” Karin speaks up to Lukas, turning to look at him in the backseat again as Chad is pulling into a parking spot. “I’d watch out if I were you. Better not break her heart.” She winks at him in what he is pretty sure she thinks is funny and endearing, but the wink to him means he’s currently signing his name on a dotted line to have his head served on a silver platter when he does, ultimately, break Courtney’s heart.

   They all get out of Chad’s mom’s Honda and make their way inside, where Courtney promised Karin she’d be waiting. When they enter, Karin makes an immediate beeline for a short blonde girl standing in the far corner of the theater. Lukas and Chad trail behind her, letting the girls have their little reunion since they had apparently not seen each other in two weeks. When they break apart, Lukas and Chad have fully approached and Courtney gives Lukas a timid smile.

   She’s a lot shorter than Lukas. That’s the first thing he notices. The second thing he notices is that she is really just as pretty in person as she is in her pictures, and he wishes more than anything that he could look at that prettiness and be attracted to her, instead of just acknowledging it as more of an observation. He wishes that he would eye her outfit and the way that her white shirt and pale jeans hug the curves she has flatteringly instead of just skim over them. He wishes that he could be captivated by her beauty, or any other girl’s, the way he was captivated by the things that were undeniably _masculine._ But he couldn’t, and at this point he was doubting he ever would.

   “You look great,” he compliments, because she _does._ She looks amazing in the outfit she chose, and she must have spent a couple hours on her hair and makeup because her lovely painted face is framed by her light blonde hair just like a picture would be. She blushes up at him and her glossed lips stretch into a more confident smile, and he craves for the gift so many other guys to fall for that enchanting smile of her’s. But he was not given that gift, so her smile is just another reminder that he’s sick and wrong inside and he wants her to just stop smiling at him as if he could give her what she needs.

   “Thank you, Lukas. You look incredibly handsome tonight.” Courtney tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and as soon as the words leave her mouth, Lukas knows that if she was just given a sharper jaw line, harder lines and ridges across her frame instead of soft curves, and something else that was indisputably male, he would be falling head over heels. But she’s not, so his head is staying firmly on his head and not falling anywhere. He hates this; he just wants it to end.

   “I got us all tickets for The Purge. I hope that’s okay; everything else just looked boring. Unless you’re the type to sing along with five year olds to the number one hit in America _Let It Go._ ”

   Lukas laughs, and she smiles brightly up at him, her brown eyes so bright it’s as if he’s the first to ever laugh at a joke she’s told. And he’s always been a sucker for big brown eyes, so he slips right into her trap and he knows he’s on the fast track to the barrel of her daddy’s Sawed-Off Shotgun because he can like her the only way he can, but her body and soul will never be coveted for the way she seeks.

   “The Purge sounds great,” Karin says, throwing an arm across Courtney’s shoulders and smiling up at Chad and Lukas. “Maybe we’ll have to hold _their_ hands during the scary parts.”

   Chad guffaws next to Lukas, and suddenly his arm is wrapped around Lukas’ shoulders, glaring down at the girls with a playful glint in his eyes. The side of his body is pressing tightly against Lukas’ and even though Lukas sees Chad as nothing more than just a best friend, the hard press of his body is incredibly distracting and he wants to keep it there. “Hah! Lukas here competes in _motocross,_ he’s hardly scared of anything.”

_Ha, if that’s not the biggest lie ever told…_

   “Motocross?” Courtney’s eyes are wide and legitimately interested. “I’ve never met someone who does that! You’ll have to tell me about it, I’d love to learn more.”

   Finally, something he could talk confidently about and not risk sounding like a stammering buffoon. “Sure, I’d be happy to,” he says just as Chad moves away from him and goes to wrap the arm that was wrapped around his shoulders around Karin’s waist. It feels cold in the movie theatre all of the sudden. “You wanna get popcorn and drinks with me? Chad’ll be pissed if he even misses the previews so he won’t get them.”

   “Sure,” Courtney happily says and falls into step with Lukas when they head over to the counter to buy two large popcorns and two large drinks. Lukas would rather share with Courtney than carry four drinks and four popcorns inside the movie theatre with just him and Courtney to carry them.

   When they get inside the movie room, the previews are nearly ending and Chad and Karin are up at the top already making out.

   “Gross,” Courtney complains, moving to a different row instead of even trying to interrupt their session. Lukas happily follows her; he’d rather sit all alone with Courtney in the movie theatre than next to his best friend loudly and grossly making out with his ballerina girlfriend. “Well, sorry you just bought popcorn and a drink they probably won’t even come down here to get.”

   “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll have him pay me back if he doesn’t come and get this stuff,” Lukas replies as he sets the drink and popcorn on the chair next to him. They aren’t able to say much else to each other, because the lights began dimming around them and the volume of the movie began to increase once the credits of the movie began to pop up on the screen.

   Halfway through the movie, Lukas is observing the few other couples that have started to snuggle up while they continued to watch the movie. Some guys had their arms wrapped around their girl’s shoulders, and some of the other girls had their heads resting on the guy’s shoulder. Even though Lukas didn’t necessarily want to be on this date and even though he would never be able to like Courtney in the way she wants, he does know formal dating etiquette. Even if he didn’t really want to be here, he wasn’t going to waste all of Courtney’s time and not at least make this date somewhat worthwhile for her.

   He looks down between them and eyes her hands, that were settled on her lap, nervously. Before he could talk himself out of it, he reached out and takes one of her smaller hands in his. It’s rougher than he expected it to be, and it throws him off a little, until he remembers that she’s Poughkeepsie’s annual rodeo queen. She didn’t get where she was on the saddle and rodeo without putting some work in or keeping her hands perfectly soft and uncalloused. With the callouses he was able to imagine, if for a cheating moment, that he was doing this with a boy. But as soon as the thought comes, he forces it to the back of his head and he looks over at her face, that is just as pretty as it was when he first saw her, and she’s smiling openly at him again. Her hand squeezes his lightly and he decides to imagine that his heart beats wildly from that like it should.

 

*******

   Lukas continues to go on dates with Courtney. He even goes on dates with her after Chad and Karin have their breakup that left Chad in tears for the first time in years. He goes on dates with her and he really does start to enjoy them. He doesn’t enjoy them the way Chad used to enjoy his dates with Karin, but nonetheless, Lukas does enjoy spending time with Courtney, and the more he enjoys spending time with her and likes her as a person, the easier it is to pretend.

   When they’re three months into their relationship, Courtney attends her first motocross race and her cheering on from the crowd does actually boost his confidence and makes him want to win even more. And when he does win, it’s even easier to pretend when he’s high off adrenaline and endorphins, so he pulls her into her first breath-stealing kiss. And when he pulls away and she looks up at him with flushed cheeks, swollen lips and wind mused her she’s _sososo_ pretty, but he could never love that prettiness the way any other of the motocross riders behind him could. He’d forever and always be nothing more than an admirer, but someone behind him could forever and always be drawn to her spellbound, the way she deserves to be adored.

   “What was that?” she giggles up at him, still so shy but no less charming.

   “What? Am I not supposed to kiss my girlfriend?”

   “Of course you’re supposed to,” she gasps, as if she’s scared that he’ll decide to stop altogether and that shakes him to the core. “You can always kiss your girlfriend.” And then she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him herself, and for a moment Lukas forgets he’s supposed to be closing his eyes and losing himself in her. So, he closes his eyes and makes a conscious effort to look as if he feels like he and Courtney are the only two people in the world. She makes a sound against his mouth and presses herself closer, so he figures he’s doing a pretty good job in doing so.

   She pulls away once she’s had her fill, and he tries to look disappointed and not thankful her lips are off of his. That’s no way to feel, especially with the way he _knows_ their kisses are good, and how he should be able to easily slip into them and everything about her, but he couldn’t possibly. Not with the way guys are still accidentally brushing against him as they walk by and the way cologne and sweat are overriding her sweet smelling perfume, leaving him light-headed and feeling like he would rather turn around and press up against one of them and kiss them breathless instead of doing it to her.

   “You should come to my competition tomorrow,” Courtney has to shout over the clamor and noise around them. “I’d love to have you there cheering me on.”

   “I’ll come,” he replies, and her brown eyes light up all over again and the strawberry chapstick flavor is back on his lips.

 

*******

   “You looked awesome out there, baby,” Lukas calls up to Courtney, who is still sitting up on her horse after just finishing her turn. “And you got the best time out there. You’ll definitely win.”

   “You think so?” Courtney asks, even though she clearly knows that she will. She’s cocky in her abilities on the saddle, the same way Lukas is about motocross, but he knows that she still likes to hear compliments. “It’s not an easy competition, especially with Erin Wallace here. She never goes down without a fight.”

   “You’ve got this in the bag, there’s no doubt about it,” Lukas says as she hops down from her horse. She thanks him with a kiss, and he catches her hips in his hands while he closes his eyes and does his best to make the kiss good and believable. He’s relieved that it’s really no more than a peck, because he really isn’t feeling it right now. Well, he’s never really _feeling it,_ but he’s feeling it now less so than usual. He isn’t sure what it is, but he just doesn’t want to touch her in more than a friendly way, and he’s scared she’ll pick up on that.

   Courtney looks up at him to say something, and it almost seems like she’s going to question him about something, but then she spots someone over his shoulder and the furrow between her eyebrows melts and her eyes bright up. “I’ll get back to you in just a second, babe. I want to go talk to Roy really quick.”

   Lukas doesn’t even have the chance to ask her who Roy is before she’s walking away from him and towards some redneck looking guy who’s still sitting on his horse. Though his horse is huge, Courtney walks over to him and his big ass horse without any sense of hesitation. She smiles up at Roy in the same way that she smiles at Lukas, but even he can tell that it’s brighter and full of admiration. When she smiles at Lukas she looks happy, sure, but she never gazes at him as though she wouldn’t want to be anywhere but there.

   If Lukas was a normal type of boyfriend he’s sure that he would be jealous. But he’s not a normal kind of boyfriend to Courtney, at least he knows that even if she doesn’t. He isn’t with her because he likes her and wants to spend as much time with her as possible without seeming clingy. He’s with her because she’s somebody he can hide behind and she’s the person who can distract her with her prettiness until he can even convince _himself_ that he never has the wrong thoughts about guys that he does.

   So, whatever jealousy he’s feeling right now, it isn’t jealousy over Courtney. But it’s not because of her either; he doesn’t feel an attraction to this Roy guy that makes him wish he was in Courtney’s place. Instead, he wishes he was in Roy’s place. He wishes that he could be able to stand as confidently as he does and smile down at a pretty girl he likes fondly like every other guy he’s met in his life. He doesn’t want to be the guy that stares at boys that way, and he really hates that he is. He hates this shameful, disgraceful part of himself. He just- he really wants it to die.

   When Courtney jogs back to him, he catches Roy’s eyes over his shoulder, and Roy expresses the jealousy that Lukas is supposed to convey. The rodeo guy’s eyes are narrowed, but they won’t leave Lukas’. It’s like he’s trying to have some sort of stare-down battle that Lukas wants to be no part of, so he looks away to wrap his arm around Courtney’s shoulders. He doesn’t want to get into a rivalry that he knows he has no chance in winning; he knows that at some point Courtney will be falling into that guy’s arms once Lukas can’t satisfy her with a love he just cannot provide.

   “So, you and this Roy guy close?” Lukas asks since he is genuinely curious, and saying this might make him sound jealous, so he goes for it.

    His fake jealousy seems to work, because Courtney furrows her brows then the corner of her mouth curls up into a teasing grin, and pokes him in the stomach twice, hard enough to make him laugh. “Someone sounds jealous,” she taunts, “and he’s just a friend. No one you have to worry about at all.”

   Lukas isn’t perceptive, at least not with other people, but when she presses her lips to his he can tell her heart isn’t in it. Maybe he takes note of it so easily because he’s the one who always kisses half-assed, but this time it’s the both of them. He doesn’t know who exactly Roy is to her, but he knows that he’s someone special she holds in her heart, and he doesn’t want to hold her back from that.

   But, if he lets her go, his cover is gone. The one thing that helps him pretend that he is actually normal would be out of his life and he wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get a new girl to hold his hand and kiss him hard enough to try and chase his thoughts away. He’s not ready to make the kind of effort to go out and find a girlfriend when the only motivation he has is for a temporary disguise, but she just came so easy to him. And she has the power to leave for Roy if she really wants to, but she’s still standing here and kissing _him_ even though Roy is sitting on his huge horse just a few feet away, his heart clearly open in a way Lukas’ never can be. That must mean something.

   “Oh, look!” Courtney exclaims suddenly, almost as soon as she pulls out of their weak kiss. Lukas looks over his shoulder and there’s a red-headed girl racing around the barrels just as elegantly and skilled as Courtney had. “That’s Erin; she’s really good isn’t she? I wish I could get to be that good.”

   “You are that good,” Lukas reassures, dragging his eyes away from Erin’s racing to look at his girlfriend. Just when he opens his mouth to say something else, the announcer over the microphone calls out Erin’s score and she’s just a few seconds behind Courtney’s time, but she also had one mess up. “You’re better,” he murmurs into Courtney’s blonde hair before letting her go so she could get her earnings.

   “You don’t look like you’ve ever been to one of these,” a voice says out of the blue somewhere behind Lukas, and when he turns around, Roy is standing there with his horse being held close to him by his reins. “I’m Roy Odell, by the way.”

   “Lukas,” he supplies, his tone almost clipped. He doesn’t get why this cowboy wanted to suddenly come over and talk to him, but he didn’t like the way Roy was eyeing him up and down like he was sizing him up. “And I’m more of a motocross kind of guy, to be honest. But my girlfriend wanted me here, so here I am.”

   “‘You’re girlfriend’?” Roy asks, his eyebrow raising and mouth twisting up into something ugly. “She has a name, ya know? She’s not just some kind of possession.”

   “Don’t get all bent out of shape just from me calling her my girlfriend,” Lukas snaps back, and for some reason Roy looks surprised that he said anything at all. That just makes Lukas all the more frustrated. What was it about him that made Roy think he was just going to lie down and take his criticisms like some bitch? He wasn’t some defenseless girl or some fag, he could dish out just as much as this _Roy Odell._ “I don’t know what the hell you’re problem is, but if you came over here just to tell me business about _my relationship,_ you better turn right the fuck around. She isn’t your girlfriend or yours to protect. She hardly needs any protecting as it is, anyway.”

   Roy behaves like he’s speechless, and for one second Lukas feels pride welling in his chest and his entire being for the first time in his life, but then his mouth is collided with a powerful fist and all that pride drains, rises and swells hot with anger. He catches his footing before he can fall on his ass, steps forward and strikes back. He feels a satisfying crunch beneath his knuckles then warm blood is coating them, and soon enough some older cowboy steps between him and Roy. A rough hand is shoved to Lukas’ chest, and he stumbles back with a snarl.

   “Roy! Get a hold of yourself, dammit! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It’s the older man shouting, and Lukas wipes the blood from his gums and lips while that country bumpkin ass is getting yelled at.

   “Lukas! What happ- are you okay?”

   Courtney is suddenly filling Lukas’ field of vision, and her hands are all over his face and shoulders. “You’re bleeding,” she fearfully pronounces, as if Lukas isn’t already obvious to that fact. He pushes his unwarranted anger towards her down as he gently takes her hands in his and pulls them away from his face. He shouldn’t be mad at her for caring, but she’s invaded his space and he felt suffocated enough without her pushing against him and getting all in his face. He doesn’t want comfort right now, he wants to beat Roy into a bloody pulp to reassure himself of the manliness that he still does have left.

   “It’s not like I got any worse than he did,” he states gruffly, gesturing with a nod of his head in Roy and that man’s direction. Roy’s nose is still bleeding and obviously crooked, but the sneer on his face still has yet to disappear, even with the man scolding him fiercely. Courtney follows his gaze, and when she spots Roy and realizes that Lukas hadn’t gotten in some fight with a nobody, the same fear that filled her face when she saw Lukas hurt returns, but tenfold. Then, she whirls to face Lukas again, fear replaced with fury and for a moment Lukas is sure she’s going to hit him herself.

   “What the hell, Lukas?! I _told_ you that there’s nothing between Roy and I! You didn’t have to go off and punch him for nothing!”

   “I didn’t start anything! He came over to me and started talking to me like I was some bitch and when I stood up for myself he fucking punched me. Do you honestly think I’m the type of guy who would go off and punch some other guy in the face just for talking to you?”

   Courtney’s face darkens with something Lukas can’t name. “I don’t know if you’d punch some guy in the face for _kissing_ me, even if I asked you to. Sometimes I really doubt if you even like me.” She spins on her heel and makes her way over to Roy, who’s finally stopped getting an earful from that man, and for the first time Lukas wants her to stay. _Please stay; don’t leave me. Don’t leave me with these plaguing thoughts and without some kind of reassurance that, hey, I can be normal and_ _right_ _too_. But she doesn’t stay and Lukas can’t ask her to because what does he have to make her stay? He hardly wants to linger within himself so what would make anyone else want to?

   So he leaves too. He marches away from the rodeo while he can still manage to hold his head high and drives back to a home he can’t get acceptance from either.

 

*******

   “Lukas, I’m sorry for what I said,” Courtney says sometime later that night over the phone. It’s past midnight, and Lukas is in his room in the dark. His dad would kill him for being on his phone this late at night, especially on a night when he’s already pissed at him for getting into a fight. But Courtney called first and he wasn’t about to just ignore her reach out to him. “I didn’t mean it. I know you like me, I just- it’s me.”

   “Don’t give me cliche breakup lines when you’re not even breaking up with me,” is all Lukas can say. He doesn’t know what else he could, because he never ever knows what to say at the worst of times, and he has nothing to defend himself with. He really doesn’t like her the way she believes he does, and she’s starting to notice that too. It’s not one of those things that he could lie about forever and get away with; she was bound to take notice. She’s not stupid. But even a stupid girl can tell when she’s not truly desired.

   “I know,” Courtney laughs over the phone, but there is no humor in it and Lukas can feel whatever sorry excuse of a relationship they had starting to crumble away in that laugh. “But it’s true. I just get insecure sometimes, it’s just the way I am. I have absolutely no reason to think you don’t like me. I feel horrible for saying something as ugly as that to you; you didn’t deserve that.”

   ‘ _But you do have a reason to think I don’t like you and you have every right in the world to spit every ugly thing you want to me because I deserve that as much as a guilty man deserves prison,_ ’ is what Lukas wants to say, but only a brave man would say that and Lukas is no brave man. What he does say is cowardly. “It’s okay, I forgive you. I wasn’t really even all that mad at you in the first place.”

   “I talked to Roy,” Courtney’s voice crackles slightly over the phone, but she sounds no less sweet. Lukas almost feels like crying. “I told him that he shouldn’t have said whatever he did to you and he never should have punched you. He said he’s sorry. I can’t promise he meant it though.”

   “Don’t be mad at Roy,” Lukas says, because even though he is cowardly he isn’t loathsome, “I don’t want your friendship with him messed up because of this. He was just trying to make sure you were happy.”

   There is silence on the other line for a while and Lukas can imagine how flattered and elated she feels from hearing that the guy she’s actually interested in, even if she realizes it or not, was protecting her and fighting to make sure she was happy. “You’re a really great boyfriend, Lukas. I’m sure no other guy would have the guts to say something like that. So thank you. Roy means a lot- he’s a good friend and I don’t want to lose him over something that should have never been an issue.”

   Lukas is the farthest thing from a great boyfriend but he takes the compliment and tapes it over some broken part of himself like a band-aid. “Yeah, that would have sucked,” he says with a real smile and laugh this time, and the giggle she responds with is just as genuine. If Lukas closes his eyes and just listens to the sound of her joy over the phone he can pretend that what between them is just as genuine as her laugh, and that the warmth he has inside his heart isn’t for a mended friendship but for a strengthening bond with his girlfriend. He’s able to pretend for thirty seconds and it’s a blissful thirty seconds spent.

 

*******

   Those thirty seconds are able to stretch themselves out into the middle of summer after sophomore year. When the seconds reach summer Lukas can tell they’re stretching themselves thin until they snap taut then wither into nothing. He’s scared for the disturbance of the snapping, but he’s terrified for the slower, painful process of shrinking and withering away into nothing.

   The snap in those thirty seconds happens on a miserably hot day when Lukas has to work around the farm shirtless and with a water bottle always somewhere close. Courtney shows up unannounced, which in itself isn’t strange because she has her own vehicle and she’s been a frequent visitor to the farm, even when she knows she’ll be stuck helping Lukas with farm work if she wants to stay and hang out with him. When Bo had made this rule, Courtney had just laughed good-naturedly before pulling on a pair of spare working gloves they had and picked up a bale of hay, talking about how her daddy would have made the very same role if the roles were reversed. Bo grew to like her a lot more after that.

   But on this day, even though everything started off as normal when she put on the pair of working gloves she’s claimed as her own and started helping Lukas pound new posts for the fence into the ground, something had shifted. Lukas could tell even though she was acting as she always did, there was something winding her body tight and nervous as though she was about to burst at the seams.

   “You okay?” Lukas finally asks her halfway through their work and he can’t stand the screaming silence anymore. “You’re acting weird.”

   “I am?” She’s obviously surprised that Lukas noticed anything about her mood, and that makes Lukas all the more confused and concerned. Maybe she hadn’t even realized that she’d been acting weird herself, but at the mention of it, everything seemed to dawn on her. Or maybe she just thought she was hiding whatever was wrong with her well.

   “Yeah. You have been since you got here. What’s up?”

   “I’ve just been thinking about something a lot,” Courtney tells him uneasily, and she drops her hands away from the post she was keeping supported for Lukas. It collapses to the grass and Lukas sets what he was using to hammer it into the ground down next to it. He wants to give her his full attention, and her uneasiness is making agitation clog in his throat. “I don’t want to bother you with it though. It’s just one of my weird insecure things again.”

   Ah, one of the times when she thinks Lukas doesn’t really like her, is what she means. Those ‘weird insecure things’ were starting to get more frequent and last longer, and Lukas wasn’t sure how much longer he could deal with the guilt of making her feel so insecure of herself. It wasn’t fair to her and she was too much of a kind person to feel so unsure about herself when it was all his fault. He was the one with so many things he hates about himself, and he doesn’t want to poison her with the same stuff that was inside him.

   “What have you been thinking about?”

   “The usual. You know, that you don’t actually like me and all the usual stuff. I don’t- I’ve never been like this before. I don’t understand why it’s all started with you. It’s not like you give me reasons to think like this, I just do.”

   “Do you think you feel like this for a reason?”

   “What do you mean?” Her voice is almost sharper in a way, but that’s not the right word to use. Lukas doesn’t know what exactly it sounds like, but she sounds hurt, he does know that. He doesn’t want her hurt, that’s the last thing he wanted her to feel, but because of his own demons that he can’t expel from within himself, they’ve slipped into her and he’s pulled her far too deep now. He can’t save her from himself; he’s taken too much and given nothing in return. At least, what he did give her, was given in friendship or in his own pretence of normal.

   “I’m just saying. Maybe there’s a reason you feel like that,” he manages to get out, and when he tries to pick the post up to distract himself with work, she pushes it forcefully out of his hands and forces him to look at her.

   “Are you saying you don’t like me?” Her eyes are wet and that feeling he gets right before he cries knots up tight in his throat, but his eyes remain dry. “Did you ever-?”

   “It’s not that!” He’s losing her- he’s just- he can’t do this. All his thoughts are a jumble in his head and panic is searing up his throat, suffocating him and leaving him nauseous. He wants to fold in on himself, hide himself away, puke and cry, ride his bike away from this town until he can even run away from himself, but he can’t do any of those things. He has a crying girl in front of him that he hurt because of his own fucking sin and what can he possibly do to save her from this? “I just- I’m thinking that maybe. Maybe there’s someone else.”

   “You like someone else?” She’s cracking at the edges just like her voice, and her shoulders are hunching until she succeeds in making herself look even smaller than she already is. Tears finally spill down her cheeks, but he can see how hard she’s trying to not make any noise in the quivering of her lips and chin. “Who? F-for how lo-?”

   “There’s no one! Not for me. For you- maybe- Roy. I think you- he likes you, a lot. I can tell and I thought that maybe-”

   “Don’t you _dare_ make me out to be the bad guy, Lukas! Just tell me what the hell is going on with you!”

_Snap!_

   “There’s nothing. I’m- I just thought.”

   “Well you thought wrong!” She’s shouting now and she doesn’t look sad anymore, but she looks angry. Lukas prefers angry over sad, he really does. At least with anger she can turn away from him and never look back. With sadness she could spend months looking back on what it is _she_ possibly did wrong when everything was always all his fault. “Call me whenever you’re ready to tell the truth!” She storms away from him and to her Jeep, and when he hears it pull away, he bends over and pukes into the grass below his feet.

 

*******

   He never calls. He never calls Courtney because he’s never going to be able to tell the truth, whatever that truth may be, and why would he call just to feed her more lies? He’s tired of lying to her and she deserves some truth so he doesn’t call, and it hurts. It hurts just like a break up would because he lost a friend he dreaded losing from the second he first held hands with her in the theater.

   But she calls. She calls Lukas two months after their breakup in front of the fence posts they worked hard on putting up together in the scorching heat. When she calls he almost doesn’t answer, but she reaches out to him like she always did, and he at least owes her one last phone call answer.

   “Lukas,” she greets when he answers her call, and his throat closes up at the sound of her voice. “You never called.”

   “I didn’t have anything I could have said.”

   “You’ll always suck at words, won’t you?” He almost wants to laugh, but he doesn’t and neither does she. “Well, I thought I could rip this band-aid off for the both of us. I think I would have gone crazy with no closure.” If it’s closure she wants then he’ll give her that; he brought her into this mess and he’s going to make sure she gets out of it clean and without his poison.

   “You always have a way with words.”

   “One of us has to,” she murmurs, and Lukas huffs a laugh this time, but she doesn’t and he knows those thirty seconds have finally withered to dust. “You were right. About Roy, I mean. He and I are together now. I thought I at least owed you the ‘you were right’ statement.”

   And Lukas is happy, he’s so happy for her. Because she and Roy are a good match, he could tell from the second he saw her talking to him so freely while he was sitting on that big ass horse of his. “I’m happy for you. I really am.”

   “Thank you,” she says, and Lukas can hear the tears in her voice, but he doesn’t mention them and he knows she’s thankful for that, too. “I hope you find someone you can really love this time. I wasn’t them for you, but I know you deserve the best person this world has to offer. I don’t regret what we had, and I want to stay friends. Maybe not now, but someday.” She takes in a shuddering breath and it sounds like static over the speaker of his phone. “I meant it when I said you were a great boyfriend. But next time, promise me, you’ll be the great boyfriend of someone who actually matters to you.”

   “I promise,” he says, and if she can her the catch in his breath as tears well in his eyes and throat, she doesn’t mention it. He’s thankful for that. That’s where Courtney ends the conversation, and he’s left with the dial tone in his ear and he lets himself cry for a girlfriend he could have loved if he wasn’t sick inside and a friendship he lost because he is sick inside.

   Neither of them call each other again, and those thirty seconds die away with a shuddering, wet breath as Lukas sobs softly into the palms of his hands.


	4. Lying to Make It and The Perfect Girlfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas starts dating Rose, the girl who is the perfect kind of girlfriend for him. Well, maybe she's perfect for all the wrong reasons. And this new city kid isn't helping matters much at all.
> 
> A/N: Thank you so much for the positive feedback I've been getting on this story! I've been planning it since Eyewitness first started airing but was just able to start writing it. This was the hardest chapter to write so far, but Philip is in the next chapter (which is coming along wonderfully so far), so this story should start to pick up speed. Thank you again everyone who has left kudos or a comment. It means a lot!

**Part Four**

**Lying to Make It and The Perfect Girlfriend**

**“We set this sail with no wind in sight and now we’re going nowhere fast”**

**Going Nowhere Fast by The Endless Line**

 

    “I heard about Courtney,” Rose says quietly behind Lukas. He’s in the shed, working on something his dad wants fixed while he’s waiting for dinner to be ready. The Palmer’s and Waldenbeck’s have been family friends for years, and his dad invited them over for dinner to catch up a little bit. Lukas didn’t really mind the dinners, but he didn’t enjoy them either so he tried to stay out of the house as much as possible until it was time to actually eat instead of just stand around and socialize. “I’m sorry about that; you seemed to really like her.” 

   “I did,” Lukas replies, and he looks up when Rose takes a step in front of him. She’s one of the prettiest girls in school, and Lukas can see why all the guys want her on their arm, but Lukas still can’t bring himself to want her. “But we just- it didn’t work out. It’s not like we were going to get married, so it was going to happen.”

   “Still, breakups hurt.”

   Lukas doesn’t give her any kind of response. He really doesn’t understand why Rose is suddenly talking to him since she never cared enough to before. Even though they’re in the same friend group they never talk much, and they just keep up pleasantries during the dinners.  They hardly have a good enough friendship to talk about his breakup with Courtney; he isn’t even sure how she heard about it.

   “So. What are you doing?” 

   “What do you want, Rose?” He sounds rude, but he doesn’t care all that much. He doesn’t owe anything to Rose, he’s still upset about Courtney, and he really doesn’t want someone he never talks to butting into his business. 

   “Oh, sorry,” Rose says, sounding completely put out and just a little angry. She starts to turn and walk away.

   “Wait, Rose,” Lukas sighs, and he’s thankful that she does actually stop walking away. He was pretty sure that she would have completely ignored him and kept walking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t really want to talk about this.”

   Rose turns back to face him smiling, “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. If you do ever want to talk about it, I’m here. You know, if you need a girl’s advice.”

   “Thanks,” Lukas says, but his attention is back on what he was working on so she didn’t have the chance to keep the conversation going. She seems to get the hint that he wants to be left alone, and he can hear her footsteps retreat from the barn and back towards the house.

 

*******

   The next day at school Lukas is getting his US History textbook when he feels a hand brush up against his shoulder. He turns around in surprise, for some reason thinking that Chad had decided to touch his shoulder weird to mess with him, but he was surprised to see Rose looking up at him with her wide eyes.

   “Hey, Lukas. I just wanted to apologize again for yesterday. I shouldn’t have tried to talk about something you weren’t ready to.”

   “It’s okay,” Lukas says, not completely sure as to why Rose has this sudden interest in him and is apologizing so often over something she shouldn’t really even be worried about. “I’m really not mad. You didn’t know.”

   “I just wanted to make sure that you knew I really was sorry,” Rose says, and she peers past Lukas’ shoulder just a bit to the inside of his locker, and her eyes widen when she spots the number of medals in there and some of the pictures of Lukas on his bike and of other inspirational motocross racers. “Woah! I knew that you were into motocross, but I never knew that you were actually so good at it. You look amazing in these pictures!”

   “Oh, thanks,” Lukas replies, a little more into the conversation now that Rose is talking about something he cares about. “I’m actually able to start getting into freestyle competitions now. You know, when motocross racers do tricks on their bikes and stuff. I’m excited for that.”

   “You mean doing things like flips?” She sounds genuinely interested, and Lukas is so surprised that a girl is wanting to talk about motocross. It isn’t like he hasn’t met girls on the motocross track that actually raced, and some of them were really good, but none of the girls at school ever showed any interest in it before. “Isn’t that really dangerous?”

   “Yeah, it can be if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Lukas says with a shrug.

   “But you know what you’re doing, don’t you? You wouldn’t be winning so many medals if you didn’t.” Rose’s voice does something weird so it sounds, in what Lukas can only describe as, sultry. It makes Lukas feel really strange, but not in a good way at all. No girl has ever talked in that tone in front of him before, except maybe Angie a couple years ago, but that experience hadn’t ended well at all.

   “Uh, yeah- I guess,” he awkwardly gets out, and Rose giggles at him, while twining a piece of hair around her finger, looking up at him through her lashes.

   “You’re cute,” she titters. Lukas can feel his blush up to his ears, and Rose seems to take that as a positive signal because she moves in closer until he can smell her flowery scented perfume. She looks like she’s about to say something, but Cynthia, one of her friends, calls her name and Rose turns to look at her. They have some sort of silent conversation all with eyebrow raises and some odd gesturing, then Rose turns back to Lukas. “I’ll see you around, Lukas.” His name comes out of her mouth almost like a purr (he wishes her voice were deeper so it would sound better to his ears). “I’d love to hear more about your motocross and races.”

   She touches his shoulder lightly again, looking up at him sideways to show off her pretty eyes and eyelashes, before she saunters over to her friend, swaying her hips a bit more than necessary as she moves. If Lukas was any other guy, he’s sure that his eyes would be glued to her curved hips, ass and thighs, but he’s Lukas so he turns back to his locker without sparing her a second glance. He doesn’t even wonder if she notices.

   This pattern of Rose openly flirting with him at his locker (Lukas may be dense, but he’s not an idiot and he knows when a girl is flirting with him) continues for the next couple of weeks. Nothing much comes out of it, and because he isn’t flirting back, he is pretty sure she’ll give up after not too long, but she doesn’t.

   She keeps coming back with that same brush against his shoulder and she’s getting to the point where she gets very close to his neck, finds something to talk about for a few minutes, and after Lukas gets into the conversation she flirts with him some more, then leaves to go to her friends or class with a sway of her hips.

   It’s not until he’s at home, scrolling through his phone and his contacts to find ones to delete, that he realizes the chance he has in Rose. He has Courtney’s name highlighted when the realization comes to him.

   Though he liked Courtney as a friend and he never wanted to hurt her with his problems, he had never wanted her to leave him without a cover to hide behind either. When it comes to Rose he doesn’t necessarily like her. He tolerates her, but after talking to her at his locker every morning, he has never found any kind of connection with her and in any other circumstance he would never be her friend, much less date her.

   His downfall with Courtney was the fact that he liked her too much. He loved her like a friend, and even though he could have never felt anything more for her because it was both physically (trust him, he’d tried before while they were dating to think of her late at night alone in his room, but his brain always composed slimmer waists, muscular thighs, and strong jawlines instead of her soft and curvy… everything) and emotionally impossible for him. If he was going to find a girl that he could hide behind and keep his sinful thoughts away, he would need a girl that he would never be close to in any other situation. Rose Palmer was that girl.

   So, the next day at school, when Rose comes to him at his locker, Lukas is eager for once. He falls into conversation much easier, and Rose smiles more and her flirting becomes more obvious the more into her Lukas seems to be. Before Rose can turn around and head back to her friends, Lukas is the one to touch her gently and ask her to stay.

   “Do you want to do something this weekend?” he asks, and he watches with delight as her eyes light up and the smile on her lips goes from flirtatious to plainly overjoyed. If Lukas liked her more as a friend maybe he’d feel bad for getting her hopes up like this, and for making her think that he really does like her the way she wants him to, but he doesn’t. Even if he was normal, even if he went out with girls he actually liked and enjoyed kissing them and fantasized about them instead of the gender he does, he still wouldn’t like her. Girls like Courtney were the type he would go out with, or the other girls on the circuit, but not Rose.

   “Yes, of course,” Rose says happily, before she’s taking out her phone, punching down on a few buttons, and putting it in Lukas’ hand. “Here, put your number in. I’ll text you later and tell you when to pick me up.”

   Lukas puts his number into her phone before passing it back to her. She gives him one last wide smile, and for a second he thinks she might kiss him, but she turns around and walks briskly back to her friends, her hips still swaying. Lukas had expected her to be easy judging from the amount of her blatant flirting, but he really hadn’t anticipated for her to say yes to a date the first time he asked.  _ Well,  _ he thinks to himself as he turns back to his locker to grab the textbooks for his morning classes,  _ at least I didn’t have to chase after a girl I don’t even like. _

 

*******

   Lukas picks Rose up on Friday evening that week for their first date at the new cafe that just opened in town. Well, actually, the cafe itself isn’t new. The building and three different cafes have been there before, but it has a new name and menu now, so, it’s considered brand new. Lukas figures it’s just part of small town excitement.

   Rose dresses up nicely, at least a lot more nicely than Lukas did. She has a tight shirt that pushes up her boobs, shows off some skin on her midriff and shoulders, and the curves of her hips coupled with a cute, little short skirt that shows off her legs. Lukas knows that if he was attracted to her in the least his eyes would be glued to her chest and legs and prettily made up face and hair, but he isn’t, so he’s more distracted by her brother glaring at him darkly through the window.

   Rose gets on the back of his bike without much said between them except brief greetings, and Lukas wonders for a second why she likes him at all, but he dismisses the thought because it makes this whole dating thing a lot easier. At least he doesn’t have to chase after a girl he doesn’t even want, he just has to play the boyfriend, and eventually in the far away future, the husband.

   He knows he’ll have to get married at some point and have a couple kids, it would be too weird if he never did. His father expects him to take over the farm one day (it’s been in the family for generations and his dad isn’t going to let that go even if Lukas ever confesses to wanting to live in the city) and Lukas is going to have to have a son or daughter to pass it on to. He won’t be marrying Rose, but he can at least have her by his side during the rest of high school.

   They pull up to the cafe in just a few minutes, and when Rose takes off the helmet he gave to her to wear, she complains about her hair. ‘Girls complain about their physical appearance too much,’ Lukas can’t help but think while he watches her fuss over her hair and fix it.

   “Why don’t you just drive a truck?” she asks when she’s parting her bangs back to the way she had them earlier, looking at her reflection in the tiny mirror of one of her tiny makeup things. Lukas thinks she would have looked less silly just leaving her hair helmet-mussed.

   “Because I like riding my bike.”

   Rose doesn’t try to argue with him, but from the huff she lets out, Lukas can tell she wants to. Lukas knows he should try to be a little nicer to her, or at least not as indifferent, but he really can’t help it. He doesn’t like her, even as a friend really. She’s too superficial.

   “Okay, I’m ready,” she announces as she’s putting away her tiny makeup mirror in her purse. He bites back ‘finally’ and holds the door open for her like a gentleman instead.

   They are shown over to a table, which are the same ones from the previous cafe, and he even goes as far as to pull out her chair for her. When they are both seated and have ordered their drinks and looked over their menus, Rose tries to spark up conversation and Lukas does his best to wholly participate, but it’s too forced and tiring so he stops. He half expects her to stand and walk out of the cafe, but a sort of reassuring smile shows up on her face instead.

   “I knew you weren’t over her yet. I probably shouldn’t have said yes. I knew you were rebounding.”

   Lukas’ eyebrows furrow in genuine confusion, not able to think of who it is Rose is talking about. He hasn’t ever had a girl he was into enough to get over, so what-? A brief flash of Courtney’s face enters his mind. That’s right.

   “I am over her. That’s why I asked you out.” It’s a sort of truth, but he’s so numb to lying anymore that he hardly even thinks about it. He never had to ‘get over’ Courtney because he never liked her the way he should have in the first place. But he didn’t ask out Rose because he liked her or thought he could grow to really like her the way he should. She was just a convenience, but it wasn’t like he could tell her that.  

   “Then why do I get the feeling that you don’t really like me?”

   Lukas falters, unable to think of a way to answer that. She got the feeling that he doesn't like her because he really doesn't, and he knows that and she was starting to know that too. But he can't lose her. He can't chase after a girl he doesn’t want and he doesn't have a lot of girls to choose from at school because none of them have shown any interest in him since he's never shown any interest in them.

  “Lukas,” Rose prompts. Her tone is short and she looks as if she’s going to get up and leave in the next five seconds. 

   “I don’t know how you could say that,” Lukas starts to say. If he can’t save it by lying about an attraction he hasn’t shown her, he could turn it around. He’s seen Chad and other guys around the school do it before to their girlfriends and it always seems to work. “I think you’re just being insecure and paranoid. I do like you.”

   Rose eyebrows furrow and for half a second Lukas is sure that she’s about to bolt, but then her glossed lips turn down into a frown and her eyes look over at something past his shoulder. “You’re probably right,” she says sullenly. “I always get like this. Sorry.”

   “It’s fine,” Lukas tries to sound reassuring, even though he’s completely relieved that it worked. “We’ll work on it.”

   She smiles at him, and Lukas gets a feeling that maybe it won’t be so hard to pretend with her either. She’s pretty enough and she’s nice even though he thinks she’s a little too girly. The thing with Courtney was that she wasn’t totally feminine; she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty or her makeup smeared (when she did wear it) or her hair messy from riding her horses. She was cool to hang out with and easy to connect to. Rose may not be like that, but she was supposed to be his girlfriend and not his friend, so maybe it was a good thing she wasn’t like Courtney. He wasn’t about to get attached to her and worried that he was going to hurt her with his own sickness. 

   “So, have you decided on what you want to eat?”

   “Oh, probably just a salad,” Rose says with a shrug. “I’m a vegetarian so no meat for me.”

   Lukas almost wants to pull a face, but he’s kind of shocked that she’s a vegetarian. Nobody in Red Hook or Tivoli dare to be anything different than the usual; anything different is looked to as strange and even wrong in some cases (like Lukas’ case). Everybody in Tivoli eats meat and vegetarians and vegans are looked at strangely, so he’s just a little surprised she came out and said she was one so boldly, as if she didn’t care what people thought about her. He wished he could share that same boldness.

   “Really? That’s…”

   “Different, I know. But I just don’t really like meat so I don’t see the point in eating it. I’m not freaked out if you eat meat or anything, I’m just not the biggest fan of it so I stopped eating it a couple years ago. Simple as that.”

   It really was as simple as that wasn’t it? In Lukas’ case, maybe he could tell his dad that he just doesn’t like girls as much as guys so he doesn’t see the point in dating girls at all instead of dating the people he actually likes. Simple as that. Lukas wishes that his weirdness was as simple and forgivable as Rose’s, but it wasn’t.

   His freaky attraction to guys wasn’t ‘as simple as that’. It was weird and unnatural, and nobody else would understand that more than him. He wanted, more than anybody else in the world, to be able to bury that wrongness that festered inside of him until it was six feet under, banging on its casket never to be seen again. But it really wasn’t that easy or he would have been in love with Courtney months ago if it was, and if it hadn’t been Courtney it would have been Rose. But never, ever would it have been a guy.

   “It’s cool I think. So what if you don’t like meat? Big deal,” Lukas said, and when the waitress came to take their order and he ordered the sirloin steak (medium rare, too) he and Rose ordered her garden salad, they shared a sort of secret salad and Lukas thought to himself that maybe this whole dating Rose thing wouldn’t be so bad.

   When they were finished and Lukas dropped Rose off at her house, she took the helmet off but didn’t complain about her hair. She gave him a sort of shy smile, which he thought was a little strange for her, but then he realized that she must have been expecting… something. Maybe not a kiss, but that was the usual end of first date gesture right?

   “I had a really nice time tonight, Lukas. I’d love to do something with you again.”

   “Yeah, I’d like that. We could go to the movie theater in Poughkeepsie if you want. There are a few actually good movies showing this weekend.”

   Rose laughs and Lukas smiles up at her from where he is still on his bike. She agrees to the movie and says that she’ll look over the movies online and let him know which one she wants to see. Then she bends down and presses her lips to his.

   It’s the same churning feeling he gets every time he kisses someone. Other than the churning he doesn’t feel anything, certainly nothing pleasant at least. He hoped it would have been different, but it isn’t, and when Rose pulls away he has to force a smile. She buys it, says goodnight then walks up to her house and disappears inside.

   Lukas revs his bike and rides back home, trying to pretend that he likes the sticky residue of her lipstick on his. It doesn’t work.

*******

    He and Rose continue going on dates and it slowly gets easier for Lukas. He falls into what he can only call a routine, much like he had when he and Courtney first started going out on dates with Chad and Karin. Their first couple of dates are a little awkward, and they don’t share anything other than a brief goodnight kiss at the end of each one (that Lukas still feels a little queasy from, but he just hopes he’ll get used to it), but they’re not  _ bad. _

  Rose has apparently chalked up his awkwardness on these first few dates to shyness, which is partially true, so he goes along with it. He isn’t even necessarily shy, though either, he’s just- he’s an awkward person by nature. He never knows what to say at the best of times, and it takes him a while to warm up to people. Even Chad and he have awkward silences sometimes when Lukas says something stupid (which is pretty often, apparently) or when he just doesn’t know how to respond to something Chad says. It’s the same way with Rose, but when he apologized for it on their third date when another silence fell over them, she just giggled and waved her hand dismissively as she claimed she found it ‘endearing’. He doesn’t really get what’s so endearing about it, but he also doesn’t really understand Rose’s interest in him at all, so he doesn’t ponder over it too much. 

  After their fourth or fifth date when they get more comfortable around each other, he starts walking Rose to class, holding her hand in the halls and sitting a bit closer to her than usual at lunch. Red Hook is such a small school and he and Rose are so popular that the news that they’re officially together spreads around fast. There had been rumors, of people claiming that they saw them at cafes, restaurants, and movies, but nobody had really seen it for themselves until then. 

  Lukas would normally resent the attention that it brings him, but this time he actually kind of likes it. He isn’t necessarily proud to be showing Rose around as his like most guys probably would if they were openly dating a girl as pretty and popular her, he just, he likes that everybody knows he’s dating her. It isn’t because it’s  _ her,  _ he would be glad in the same way if he was dating Pamela Bertram who all of the guys constantly avoid because she has too much acne on her face, has lips shaped like a fish’s and has hair so greasy it sticks to her scalp and looks wet. He just likes the fact that people know he’s dating a  _ girl  _ and with everybody going up and congratulating him so happily, he really starts to believe that he’s just as happy dating her as they are for him. 

  After a couple weeks of this, he eventually even forgets about how nice Andy Hannon looks in his tight muscle tees and instead starts appreciating the curves Rose’s shirts show off. It’s a relieving thing to forget. 

*******

   He and Rose continue to date throughout the rest of the school year and up to the summer. Their relationship is simple enough, and Lukas doesn’t remember the last time they fought or really even had an argument of any sort. It’s nice, especially when so many of the couples in their friend group complain about how often they get into fights, and how jealous they are of Lukas and Rose. It isn’t really only the envy from their friends toward a relationship that he’s not really even putting much effort in that Lukas likes. What he really likes about it is that he doesn’t have to try too hard in a relationship he feels like he has nothing he should fight to hold onto.

   Rose and he spend a lot of time together during the summer, mostly because she doesn’t have much to do and sticks around while he does work around the house and practices on his bike. Unlike Courtney, she doesn’t lift a finger to do work, but he doesn’t expect her to. She didn’t grow up on a farm like Courtney did, and even if she did, she’s too into makeup and manicures to risk getting herself dirty. He doesn’t particularly like that about her but she doesn’t really like how much time he spends on his bike, so he figures it’s a fair trade. 

  When they aren’t at his house spending time outside while he works, they’re hanging out with friends at the bowling alley down the street from Chad’s house or spending time alone on dates at the movies or the same restaurants they always go to. Sometimes they watch Netflix at her house, but with two younger siblings there it gets loud fast, so they like to typically steer clear from there. 

  They’re at the bowling alley with friends in the middle of July, already halfway through summer break and the summer is beginning to feel bittersweet because this is their last summer as high school students before they graduate into the real world. Rose is huddled up with her friends at another table, gossiping about something that he and Chad had no interest in so they walked up to the lane, not bowling, just talking. 

  “So,” Chad starts to bring up casually, and Lukas almost wants to drop the bowling ball on his foot before Chad can continue with whatever he’s going to say because when he starts off a sentence like that it’s never good. He resists the urge and sends it down the lane instead; he only hits two pins. “You popped her cherry yet?” Chad says although it looks like he wants to make fun of Lukas. Yep, Lukas should have dropped the ball on his foot. 

  “Who the fuck says that?” he snaps to cover up his embarrassment, but Chad just raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of his slushie that’s starting to turn his tongue blue. Lukas decides not to tell him. “But no, we haven’t had sex. She said she wants to wait.” Which he’s totally okay with, he doesn’t even want to start thinking about having sex with her. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever really want to.  __

__ “Really?” Chad asks, like he’s surprised by the fact that Rose wants to wait to have sex. Lukas wasn’t too surprised when she told him this in the middle of making out one day since she did live in a Christian household, and even if she wasn’t much of one herself, she still held some Christian values. But maybe Chad just doesn’t know that. “You guys have been dating for a year by now, haven’t you? Angie and I had sex by the second week.” 

  Lukas gives Chad a sidelong glance. “That’s because Angie is a slut, and you know that. She’s not really a good example.” 

  Chad does a sort of half nod thing while he winces. Angie had cheated on Chad twice before Lukas caught her in the hallway one day with the captain of the football team practically swallowing her tongue. He’d alerted Chad as soon as he saw him in fifth period, and when Chad confronted her about it she confessed to sleeping with two guys while they were together. 

  Lukas also went with him to the doctor to get tested for any STD’s, and even though Chad would like to push the memory out of his head, he’d held Lukas’ hand for comfort while the doctor came out to tell him the test results. They were negative, thank God, and as soon as Chad’s worst fears were cast away, he let go of Lukas’ hand, slapped him on the shoulder with a declaration of “no homo” followed by a relieved laugh. Those words had stuck with Lukas the rest of the day. 

  “Okay, okay, bad example. But me and Holly slept together about two months in. I think. It was something like that.” 

  “Why did you bring up Angie before your current girlfriend?” 

  “Because Angie and I slept together way before Holly and I did! I was just trying to show you how ridiculously long you’ve been waiting to have sex!” 

  “Not all couples sleep together right away. Some even wait for marriage, you know?” 

  Chad blanches and looks at Lukas as if he’s grown a second head. “You’re not waiting for marriage are you?” He looks over at Rose and Amanda then leans in close to hiss, “you aren’t  _ thinking  _ about marrying her right now are you?” 

  “Fuck, Chad, no,” Lukas curses then shoves Chad out of his face. “I was just saying. It’s normal for some couples to wait until they jump in bed together. I mean, we’re only in high school.” 

  Chad raises his eyebrow again at that, and he opens his mouth to say something, but then Holly is leaping forward and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, clinging to him like a monkey. Chad makes a horrified expression as he stumbles with her on his back, and Holly shrieks, but as soon as he regains his footing they both start laughing. Lukas blinks, wishing he had somebody he could be as stupidly happy with. 

__ Rose sides up next to him, grasps his hand in hers and smiles up at him. He returns it, but it’s strained. Sure, Rose and he are dating, but he doesn’t remember ever being so mindlessly carefree with her. He wasn’t even like that with Courtney. He guesses that only real couples that have an actual chance at making it can be that happy. He wonders if his dad was ever like that with his mom, and then he wonders if he’ll ever get to experience that sort of giddiness. He doesn’t think so. 

*******

   It’s the first day of senior year and Lukas is already, somehow, screwing up. It’s third period and his physics teacher must be the spawn of Satan, because he has never been chewed out so badly from forgetting his pencil in his locker. What teacher started actual classwork on the first day of school anyway? It wasn’t Lukas’ fault that he didn’t think any teacher would require a pencil during the first day.

  It wasn’t only that he didn’t think that he wouldn’t need a pencil, it was that he had been distracted all morning from the rumor that a new kid was showing up to Red Hook. He heard it first from Rose when he picked her up to take her to school, and she claimed that she heard Gabe Caldwell, the town’s most popular vet, talking about it with her dad while he was tending to their sick dog. So, since Lukas never had a reason to not believe her before, he automatically assumed that it was true. When Rose told her best friend Cynthia about what she heard, the rumor was spread around school like a wildfire. 

  The only thing that anybody knew about this new kid was that he was in the foster system for some reason, from the city, and that he was being taken into Gabe Caldwell and Helen Torrance’s home. Lukas had never cared much about new kids before, as rare as they were, but for some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about it today. But the thing was, it was already third period and he hadn’t seen this new kid anywhere. 

  Red Hook is not a big school. It’s really just got a hallway for classrooms and lockers, a room for the gym and the cafeteria that are connected, a front office, and a library about the size of a coat closet. The fact that nobody has spotted a new kid, that would really stick out like a sore thumb, is leading people to think that maybe the rumors were all rubbish. 

  He’s slamming his locker shut, a little more forcefully than normal to get his agitation out towards Mr. Stanley and his stupid pencil policy, when he spots another kid standing in the hallway near his locker. As soon as he catches sight of him from the corner of his eye he can tell that he isn’t from around here. He’s wearing this big leather jacket with patches all over it that no one in this hillbilly town would wear, skinny jeans and his hair seems to be styled with more effort than any other guy in this school would put into his hair. He’s definitely not from anywhere in Red Hook or even Poughkeepsie; he looks like a city kid. 

  Lukas has apparently been staring too long, because the kid suddenly turns his head away from organizing his locker and their eyes meet. He’s got huge brown eyes and eyelashes that could compete with Rose’s even when she’s got mascara on, and his lips look- well, Lukas stares a little too long at them and when the kid clenches his jaw Lukas has this feeling of wanting to press his mouth against it. 

  When that desire comes forth so quick and suddenly that Lukas thinks for a second that he’s really going to follow through with it, he turns on his heel and walks away as quickly as possible instead. All the feelings and thoughts that he’d been successfully starting to bury for the last year were suddenly starting to dig themselves up from the grave and coming alive again with a vengeance. Lukas can’t have that happen; he needs to shove them back down and hammer the nail into that coffin. Having a city boy that’s too pretty for his own good inside his school is the last thing Lukas needs. 

  When he walks back into his physics class and sits down next to Chad, his hands are shaking. Halfway through class, when they’re all working on some stupid ‘get to know me’ survey, Chad turns to him and starts speaking. “The hell happened to you? You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “New kid,” is all Lukas says in response, and that’s all he has to say because Chad’s face lights up in some sort of eager excitement. Lukas never understands the buzz around getting new kids because all anybody ever does is make them outcasts and make fun of them. Or maybe they get excited over making another person’s life a living hell, which makes no sense to Lukas, but he doesn’t understand a lot of what kids his age do. 

  By the time lunch rolls around, the New Kid is sitting alone at a table and no one has invited him to sit with them. Lukas is tempted, but he’s sitting with the group of popular kids, that he guesses he’s actually a part of, and inviting a new kid to sit with them would be social suicide. Besides, the last thing he needs to do is get closer to this kid that makes his stomach tighten with something he’s never felt before, but he likes it, and his heart race like Dylan used to make it do. 

  Lukas does his best to ignore the new kid’s existence at all costs. He doesn’t do a very good job of it. 


	5. Sick Whips and Ricocheting Gunshots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas, unable to keep his distance from Philip Shea any longer, finally approaches him. When he does, he learns that he's interested in motocross as well as camera stuff, he jumps on that as an excuse to start hanging out with him. After six weeks and Lukas is getting far too comfortable, he kisses him inside his dad's cabin. As if failing to keep this wrong part of himself under wraps anymore wasn't bad enough, some murders are thrown into the mix too.
> 
> (A/N: Thank you so much to everybody who has left such nice reviews and kudos on this story! It really keeps me motivated to keep this story going. Good news, Philip is finally here!)

**Part Five**

**Sick Whips and Ricocheting Gunshots**

**“Wide eyed both in silence, wide eyed like we’re in a crime scene”**

**Candles by Daughter**

  A week after the New Kid shows up, whose name is actually Philip Shea but everybody still calls New Kid, Lukas can hardly get him out of his mind. It isn’t just because he’s drawn to this New Kid in the same way he was Dylan all the way back in whatever grade it was, it’s also because he hasn’t seen him interact with anyone at school. 

The New Kid still sits alone at lunch, in fact, he seems to have taken up to the coat closet sized library during lunch just to get away from all the whispering and jibes the other kids continue to throw at him. Lukas doesn’t blame him, he’d do the same if he was getting talked about the same way Philip is. 

   Little is known about Philip, mostly because nobody ever talks to him aside from teachers, but there’s a lot of rumors surrounding him. A few people say that he’s in the foster system because his parents died and he killed them and got away with it, but only a select few of dramatic kids really believe that one, and for the most part no one has really supported that rumor.

   Other kids say that he’s a fag and his parents kicked him out of the house because of it, which is a more popular rumor. Lukas hates that rumor more than the murdering his parents one because something about it strikes a personal nerve in him and it hits too close to home. Lukas doesn’t really know if Philip is actually gay like everyone is saying, but when Lukas looks at him he can’t help but think that he really does have that kind of… appearance. He looks soft in certain places, kind of like a girl, and he walks with a bit of a sway in his hips, and his face is just pretty. Most guys don’t have a face like that, and Lukas is fairly sure that a few girls in the school are a little jealous of how pretty Philip is without putting in any effort.

   The most popular rumor is that one of his parents was a junkie that overdosed and that forced him into the system. That specific rumor has branched off into a ton of different ones, including things like his parents are junkies but still alive but they just can’t take care of him anymore and that his parents are junkies and he was caught sucking dudes off in back alleyways for money and got sent away. Lukas almost supports that last rumor because it would make sense. He knows very little of drugs and the addiction to them, but he does know the addiction is life-ruining and drugs, for the most part, are expensive. If Philip was out trying to get money in an easy way, selling his body would be a quick way to get a lot of money for that. He doesn’t really think any less of him for it like most of the kids who believe this rumor do, it just makes him want to know more; it makes him want to know the truth. He wants to get to know Philip.

   What he does actually know about Philip are little insignificant things that he’s gathered from watching him in classes or seeing him sometimes around town. From their shared classes, Lukas learned that Philip is quiet. He’s usually reading or working on homework or concentrating on something on his phone when they’re allowed to have them out after class work is finished. He also learned that Philip clenches his jaw  _ a lot  _ and it’s incredibly distracting for him, especially in Algebra III because they sit directly across from each other and he can always see it in his peripheral. His math grade’s demise is due to Philip’s jaw, and he wishes he could tell his dad that and have him understand, but he knows he’ll just have to blame it on Rose who sits in front of him. Candidly, he hardly notices her.

   The other thing he notices doesn’t happen at school, it happens in town every single Friday and Saturday. He didn’t search out for Philip on purpose or follow him from school like some creep, but his dad had called him on Friday after school asking him to pick up some salt from the store if he wanted steak that night. So, of course, Lukas went off to the store for the salt without any argument.

   He went into the town’s only gas station with actual food inside it, Kracker Barrel, and picked up the salt. When he was walking back up toward the front, he spotted Philip a couple aisles away at the Slushie machine munching on a Slim Jim. He didn’t go over to talk to him or even really contemplate doing so, he just marched right on to the checkout and paid for the salt. But, even though he didn’t stop to talk to him, that didn’t stop that weird gnawing feeling in his insides that was urging him to talk to him. When he went out Saturday for a pint of ice cream he saw Philip in the same place in his signature leather jacket. He still didn’t talk to him. That gnawing feeling remained and only chomped harder. This became a pattern for the next two weeks.

   It’s a Saturday on the third week of Philip’s arrival when the gnawing feeling finally wins. Lukas is getting another pint of ice cream because he’s had a craving lately, and Philip actually isn’t in the store, which he’s not sure if he’s disappointed or relieved about. He wants to say it’s the latter, but he isn’t so sure he’s even too convinced of that. He finally makes a decision on ice cream flavors (butter pecan) after five minutes of debating, pays for it and still doesn’t see Philip inside the store. And he supposes that’s a pattern broken, but that twisting is still in his stomach, but it isn’t really a gnawing now, it’s that same feeling he gets when he loses a motocross race he was so confident in winning.

   He’s stepping out of Kracker Barrel when he actually sees Philip. He’s standing in front of his bike, and Lukas is half a second away from dropping the ice cream and shoving Philip away from it in fear he’s about to steal it, but before he does, he sees the flash on Philip’s phone camera goes off and Lukas’ head rushes with realization. All he feels is relief for a moment, just glad that Philip wasn’t about to try and take off with his motorcycle, but then something else fills his chest when he thinks he actually has something to talk to Philip about.

   The word “hey” is out of Lukas’ mouth before his brain even caught up with the rest of his body to register that his legs moved and his mouth started moving without his conscience consent. But, when Philip’s shocked eyes met his, he knew that his mental consent towards his own body and nervous system was the least of his concerns now.

   “Shit, is this your bike?” Philip asks, pocketing his phone then backing away, looking on edge and like he’s going to bolt any second. Lukas never really thought he was intimidating in any way, but here he was, causing a  _ city boy  _ to back away from him like a cornered wounded animal. “I seriously didn’t know, sorry. I-I wasn’t going to steal it, I was just taking pictures. I’ll delete them.”

   “No, it’s cool, Man,” Lukas says quickly before Philip can actually turn around and run away from him. If he were to do that Lukas isn’t so sure he’d ever get the confidence again to talk to him. “I didn’t know you were into motocross. If I knew I would have let you take some pictures without you freaking out. I’m Lukas, by the way. With a K.” He adds the last part unnecessarily, and he feels like a complete idiot as soon as it’s out of his mouth, and he can feel his face heating at the sight of Philip’s barely disguised amused smile.

   “I’m Philip. With one L.” Philip’s still smiling up at him, but it isn’t teasing like Lukas expected it to be. It’s just pure amusement, and it’s the kind of smile that lights up his eyes and just leaves Lukas staring at them for one second too long. Philip doesn’t seem to notice, and if he does, he doesn’t think anything of it, or he just chooses not to mention anything. “Um, yeah. I didn’t mean to take these, in like, secret or anything. I didn’t even know that you rode.”

   That last statement catches Lukas a little off guard because everybody in town knows that Lukas is the only kid in town that rides with a future career with it in mind, but Philip’s new and it isn’t like he’s had anybody to tell him who everybody is in Red Hook or what they do. Well, if no one else has told him about Lukas then Lukas can do it himself.

   “Yeah, I do, actually. I do competitions, post videos online for sponsors and all that shit. I’m pretty serious about it.” He pauses for a second because that isn’t much for Philip to go off of. “The videos are pretty bad, though. I have to balance my phone on some rocks because I’ve got nobody to film and I’m not even in half the footage. And I can never catch my air right.”

   “I could do it,” Philip says without any hesitation, and even when Lukas stares blankly at him for a minute just out of surprise, he doesn’t get nervous about his offer. “If you want. I like taking pictures and taking video is pretty much the same thing. It’d be good practice for me and you’d get the footage you want.”

   Lukas, in all reality, doesn’t have to accept Philip’s offer. He could have Chad, his best friend, or Rose, his girlfriend of two years, go out there and film for him. He doesn’t have to say yes to Philip, a guy he hardly knows except for the fact he’s an obvious fan of blue Slushies and has barely had a conversation with yet. But he does, because he doesn’t want Chad out there filming with his shaky ass hands, or Rose with her almost stifling compliments and too-sticky kisses. He wants Philip, leather jacket clad, hair wind-swept, and large brown eyes completely focused on him. He shouldn’t want this but,  _ God,  _ he does.

   When he agrees he knows he’s on incredibly thin ice. He’s standing on ice so thin that it’s already cracking at his feet, trembling under his weight, and two seconds away from cracking away completely until he’s completely submerged in frigid water. He doesn’t care as much as he should, and the ice is snapping more. And when Philip smiles happily at him and his eyes light up with something, the thoughts and feelings Lukas has been trying to keep buried for years have finally stuck their hand through the thick mound of dirt of their grave. That doesn’t scare him as much as it should.

   “I’m free now if you are,” is what Lukas says instead of tucking his tail between his legs and running straight to Rose to press his lips desperately to hers to quiet the thoughts for just long enough for the hand to sink back down. Instead of sinking, the grappling hand just clutches onto dirt and digs feverishly when Philip speaks again.

   “I’m not trying to get back to Helen and Gabe’s in a hurry.”

   So, Lukas abandons his butter pecan ice cream on the sidewalk before he hands Philip his helmet. He’s revving the engine up when Philip straddles the bike behind him, and his uncertain hands grip at Lukas’ shoulders instead of the proper place on his waist. The touch burns Lukas’ skin through his shirt, even when Philip’s hands are just settled on his shoulders, so he should know better than to guide them down to his waist, but he does it anyway and as soon Philip’s fingers are gripping at his hips, Lukas’ spine trembles with desire. He keeps his hands there anyway because he’s foolish and he doesn’t want to let this feeling go yet; he hasn’t ever felt it before and he never will, so all he wants to do is savor it for a bit.  

   Lukas drives them to his favorite place to jump, which is about ten minutes out of town and about another five minutes down a dirt road that leads into the forest until it opens up into a clearing of mostly dirt, a few hills and a small lake in the middle of it. Philip slides off the bike and as soon as he does Lukas misses the warm, hard line of his body pressing up against his. Never in his life has he  _ missed  _ physical contact with another person, most of the time he was actually grateful for it to be gone, but this time something about Philip’s front pressed up against his back had almost felt… comforting in a way.

   With Courtney he had gotten used to it, but it was never comforting and he never longed for her to be back on the bike with him just so he could feel her against him again. And Rose, even though he’s used to her being close to him like that, he still doesn’t like it, and he certainly doesn’t ever want her soft curves against him.

   He should want to keep Philip as far away as possible from him because of this, and a part of him does; the part that has won the internal battle for years that kept him at arm's length with guys and left him hiding behind pretty girls to try and convince everybody (convince  _ himself)  _ that he was normal, wanted Philip gone. That part wanted him to spin around as fast as he could on his bike and leave Philip in the dust here to never talk to him again, and if it had been a few months ago, or even a couple weeks ago, he might have done that very thing.

   But now, the other, more docile part of him that he always did a fantastic job in ignoring, is pushing that clamorous fragment of himself aside and mellowing it into more of a gentle complaining grumble until Lukas can’t think of more than two reasons as to why he should cut Philip out of his life, and even those two reasons don’t send him into a sheer panic. He likes it. He doesn’t remember ever feeling so free or relaxed with himself in his life, and he feels as if he could do tricks on his bike until the only light he had was the moon, stars and his headlight.

   “I should be able to get most of your air here! The lighting is perfect!” Philip has to yell over the loudness of Lukas’ engine, and Lukas has no idea what Philip means by ‘perfect lighting’, but he trusts him with the camera more than a pile of rocks, so he nods after Philip hands him back his helmet and rides off to do what he does best, feeling more confident about it than he had in a long, long time.

   When he’s done, Philip is standing up on top of a small hill instead of the place where he’d last left him and Lukas drives up the hill until he reaches him. He does a little wheelie right before he reaches Philip, kicking dirt up onto his jeans, but Philip doesn’t seem to care, and Lukas tells himself that he isn’t cruising on this sort of high because he successfully impressed Philip, a boy, with the one thing that stayed constant through his entire life and made him ridiculously happy.

   “That was amazing, dude! This has to be posted, you look great!”

   Something swells up inside Lukas’ chest, but he ignores it for now because he’s feeling too happy in this moment to lose it to a panic attack. To keep that panic at bay, he ignores the way his stomach flips and tightens from the way Philip says his name, and how his heart races from the praise. He chalks them both up to the adrenaline to riding and doing a great job doing it.

   “I’ll link you up to my YouTube channel tomorrow. I gotta get home soon for dinner, so I’ll drop you off at your place. Or wherever you want to go.”

   Philip climbs back on the bike, and that feeling of heated sort of lightness floods through Lukas’ head and body again when Philip’s front is pressed against him and his hands are on his waist. “My place is fine. I’ll give you directions while we drive.”

   It takes them twenty minutes to reach Philip’s house, and when he drops him off neither Ms. Torrance or Dr. Caldwell come outside, and Lukas isn’t sure if he’s relieved by that or not.

   “Hey! You know that tunnel a little ways behind the school?” Lukas calls out to Philip when he’s halfway up to the porch. Philip turns around to nod, and he’s got a sort of furrow between his brows that Lukas recognizes as confusion, but Lukas doesn’t dwell on that long. “Meet me there after school so I can link you up to my account.”

   “Shouldn’t you just do that in school?”

   Lukas thinks Philip sounds a little hurt, and he can understand why, but he can’t think about that right now. He doesn’t care much about his reputation at school, at least, not in the ways that most normal teenagers his age do, but he can’t afford having Philip so close to him at school. He feels too free and normal around him, as if this illness inside him is okay to have and that maybe it really isn’t that bad, and that just- that’s just a risk that he absolutely cannot take. At least not now. Not at this school inside this town full of people with the same exact biased mindset.

   “It’s too complicated. My group of friends, they’re not- not the best people,” he says, which is true. Chad is okay, but he’s got his own type of biases, and Lukas doesn’t want to risk losing his friendship with him.

   “Ah, I get it,” Philip says, and his face has gone somewhat closed off, and his voice is clipped. He isn’t the same carefree Philip that Lukas remembers while he was taking footage of him jumping. This Philip seems older, more used to rejection. That thought makes his heart clench in his chest, and he’s about to take it back and say that of course Philip could hang out with him at school, but then his dad’s face flashes through his head, and he can’t risk losing the only parent he has left either. He and his dad don’t have the best relationship in the world, but it could be worse and Lukas really doesn’t want to lose what they do have. “They don’t like me.”

   “No,” Lukas says, and it’s nothing but honestly that’s pouring out of his mouth. That’s a first. “Our school is really clique-ish. No new kid that shows up really makes any friends here, but I want to keep hanging out with you. You’re cool.”

   “No, seriously, I get it,” Philip says, waving a hand in front of him, and it’s kind of a flamboyant motion, but Lukas doesn’t address it, and Philip doesn’t even seem to notice that he had done it. Maybe Lukas is just paranoid. “I don’t blame you, really. It’s fine, we’ll meet in that tunnel, I know where it is. I can keep filming for you if you want, too.”

   “Yeah, I- that’d be cool,” Lukas says, thankful that Philip agreed so fast to keep hanging out in secret. He wasn’t sure if Philip agreed because he really understood where he was coming from, or just because he was desperate for somebody to hang out with. Lukas hopes it’s the former. Nothing else is said between them as Philip turns around and walks towards his porch and disappears inside. As soon as the screen door slams shut, Lukas revs his engine again and peels out of the driveway and heads down the street until he reaches his house, which is only about five minutes away from Philip’s.

   At dinner that night Lukas doesn’t mention anything about Philip to his dad. It feels weird not mentioning him, though, because Lukas really is excited about meeting him and hanging out with him tomorrow after school. He’s never felt that way before with Courtney or Rose, or any of the other girls he pretended to be interested in before. Lukas hopes it doesn’t mean anything, but he knows it probably does. That thought doesn’t panic him as much as it probably should, but that part of him that tells him that every single thought he’s had about guys is sick and wrong is subdued tonight. Lukas doesn’t think it’ll stay that way, but he’ll appreciate it for the time that it is.

*******

   The following Monday, nothing inside school changes. On the outside, it’s as if he and Philip still haven’t even talked, and don’t know the first thing about each other (like Philip knowing it’s Lukas spelled with a K like he had so awkwardly told him). Lukas hung out with his group of friends, acting like nothing was different and Philip continued to sit at a table alone, working on whatever homework the teachers had assigned him.

   Throughout lunch Lukas spares little glimpses over in Philip’s lonesome direction, but he makes no movement to make his way over to his direction or even invite him to the table. It’s harder than it usually is, but he’s too worried about everybody else seeing some sort of expression on his face that expresses emotions he doesn’t even want to acknowledge himself yet.

   When he goes to meet Philip at the tunnel at the end of the day, he’s a little worried that Philip won’t show up out of anger. He wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t, Lukas isn’t too sure he would go out to meet someone who wanted to keep something as basic as a friendship a secret, but he can’t explain to Philip that if he was normal that he wouldn’t have to keep a friendship with him a secret because there would never be the chance of him wanting more.

   Once he shows up to the tunnel, there isn’t anybody there, but he rode his motorcycle, so he can’t expect Philip to show up as quickly on that pedaling bike that he has. He waits for ten minutes, and when he’s just about to panic himself out of the tunnel and completely out of Philip’s life, Philip shows up, slightly out of breath, red and sweaty.

   “Sorry,” Philip gasps when he gets inside the tunnel and gets off his bike. “I got held up by a teacher and it takes a while longer to get here on this thing.” He gestures to his bike, but before Lukas can even think of a response, he’s pulling his phone out of his back pocket and handing it to Lukas. “Go ahead and link it to your account. And you can add your number in there, too. You know, if you want to.”

   Lukas adds his YouTube account onto Philip’s phone, and he has the briefest moment of hesitation before he’s opening up his contact list and adding his number. From what he could tell Philip’s contact list wasn’t very long, and he wondered if Philip had any friends back in the city either. He wondered why Philip was in the foster care system, especially because he saw the contact name ‘Mom’, and he didn’t think that was Helen. He just had a lot he wanted to know about Philip.

   “My number is in there. You can text me whenever,” Lukas says, handing Philip’s phone back to him, and Philip nods with a small smile. Lukas feels really awkward for the first time in front of Philip, but he can’t put his finger on why exactly he feels so weird all the sudden. It isn’t the kind of awkwardness that comes from being uncomfortable with someone or not really wanting to be around them, but more of a nervous giddiness. Maybe it’s because Philip has his number now. When that thought enters his head, his stomach flips and he know that, yes, that’s the reason.

   “Thanks,” Philip says after he looks at his phone for a few seconds, just studying Lukas’ number on the dimmed screen. Then his thumbs are flying across the keyboard just for a moment, and Lukas’ phone buzzes in his pocket, still on vibrate from school. “I just sent ‘hey’ that way you have my number.”

   “I’ll add it later.”

   Philip nods then puts his phone into his leather jacket pocket. “Is there something you wanted to do? I could go film you again if you want.”

   Lukas is about to agree to that, but he doesn’t really feel up to it, which is rare, but right now he really just wants to chill and get to know Philip a little bit more, he can’t do that doing tricks on his bike while Philip just films him. So far the only thing he knew about Philip was his name was spelled with just one ‘L’ instead of two and he was into motocross, at least the aesthetic of it. But there was more he wanted to know. Way more.

   “Nah, man. The light is shitty today for filming anyway,” he says even though he has no real idea on whether or not it is. Judging from the reappearance of Philip’s slightly amused smile he was way off. He didn’t stop talking though. “I was thinking we could go do something else. I don’t know… swim or study, I guess.”

   “Wow, real riveting suggestions you’ve got there,” Philip jokes, his lips still doing that little quirk thing that’s making Lukas stare at them for far too long. “Swimming or studying, huh? How will I ever choose?”

   “Shut up,” Lukas laughs, because he really can’t bring himself to feel offended when Philip is looking at him like  _ that.  _ “Unlike the city, we don’t have a million things to do around here. You’ve got, like, five mildly interesting things you can choose to do.”

   “We could go down to the lake and skip rocks. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that.”

   Lukas raises an eyebrow. “ _ Skip rocks _ ? Out of all of the things you’ve wanted to do in your life, you’ve wanted to skip rocks?”

   “Shut up,” Philip says this time instead. “I’ve never gotten to do it before and I want to.”

   “You’ve got weird dreams,” Lukas says, but he’s not about to say no to Philip’s idea. It’s kind of lame, sure, but that’s probably just because Lukas has done it a thousand times before to kill boredom with Chad. “But yeah, let’s go skip some rocks. You wanna take my bike and come back for yours later?”

   “Yeah,” Philip replies, takes Lukas’ helmet again and straddles the bike as if he’s done it a thousand times. Rose is still awkward when she gets on his bike, even though she’s done it multiple times before, and for some reason Lukas just really likes that Philip just climbs right on. When Philip puts his hands on his waist, Lukas feels that same scorching fire lick across his skin and he nearly trembles from it. He really should mind it more, but with Philip he really can’t bring himself to.

   It’s a weird thing to know that he should really care more about how Philip’s friendly touch alone can make him feel the way he does, but at the same time just  _ not  _ care in the least. He likes when Philip touches him, and even though Philip is undeniably a male, he can’t help it. He longs for more, and he can tell that the thin ice beneath his feet is shifting threateningly under him, but he thinks  _ let me fall through.  _ This is the first time he’s been so careless as to think like that. It scares him, but…  _ but- _

   “So, have you lived here all your life?” It’s Philip’s voice that rouses Lukas from his thoughts, and he realizes that they’re standing at the pond where he last did his jumps with Philip filming him. This time they’re standing near the pond and Philip is just chucking rocks into the lake for now. Lukas doesn’t even remember driving them here, which probably isn’t safe, but they got here in one piece so.

   “Yeah,” Lukas says after another moment of coming back to himself. “Most of the people have. It’s not really one of those towns that you just randomly move to. Families have usually been here for generations.”

   “I could tell. Just walking around town, people talk to each other like they’ve known each other for years. And even me. When I go into stores they wave and talk like they’ve known me since diapers. No one in the city is like that.” Philip throws another stone, but it isn’t as forceful as the last one, and there’s this distant look in his eyes, clearly lost in his own thoughts now.

   “I bet you miss it. The city.”

   Philip shrugs, blinks a couple times then turns to face Lukas. “Sometimes. Mostly I just miss my mom. She’s not- she’s in a bad place right now, but she’s not a bad person. I think I like the country more, but. It’s just not the same without her.”

   Lukas doesn’t respond for a few moments because he can’t sympathize with him. His mom died years ago and to be honest he barely remembers anything about her. He misses her, but in more of a  _ what could have been  _ or a  _ what was she like?  _ kind of way. Not the way Philip is obviously feeling the absence of his mom. Lukas kind of wishes he could know what that felt like.

   But he also doesn’t really know what it’s like to miss a parent at all, not in the same way Philip does. His dad, he loves him of course, but he doesn’t really think he’s going to miss him when he moves out and fulfils his dream on the circuit. Their relationship is strained, at best, and Lukas is fairly sure it partially has to do with the fact his mom died, but Lukas knows, deep down, that he’s pushed himself away from his dad on purpose. He was scared enough of disappointing him without being super close to him… he didn’t want to imagine what that fear would be like if his dad was like his best friend.

   “Is that why you’re in the foster system?” He doesn’t offer any apologies to Philip because it doesn’t seem like Philip really wants to hear them. It didn’t seem like Philip was telling him what he is because he wants pity or a shoulder to cry on. It was more of just telling Lukas facts about his life, and even though they were pretty sad, he was stating them in a ‘it is what it is’ type of way. Lukas isn’t sure if that makes it more sad or not.

   “Yeah. My mom was caught with meth after someone gave the police a tip. I’m pretty sure it was one of her ex’s that she managed to piss off.” He throws a rock with extra force this time, and it smashes against the water loudly, breaking through the surface with anger. “But she’s not a bad person or a bad mom. She just doesn’t have to motivation to quit, I guess.”

   Lukas assumes that Philip is indirectly saying that he isn’t enough for his mom to stop taking her drugs. Lukas doesn’t know much of anything about drugs, except from that they were highly addictive and dangerous and that he was never going to get near them. But, he doesn’t think people could break out of the addiction no matter how much they loved another person or no matter how bad they wanted to do it for someone else. He’s pretty sure any addiction doesn’t work that way. He saw it often with his dad’s drinking, and though his dad never got abusive, he could tell his dad always regretted a night of heavy drinking, especially when Lukas had to clean up his mess. But the drinking never stopped, no matter how often his dad regretted and Lukas put that bottle of whisky in the cabinet and set a couple of aspirins on his dad’s nightstand.

   “I didn’t think she was a bad person to begin with,” Lukas reassures. He’s a little surprised that Philip opened up with him so quickly, but it isn’t like it’s some huge secret. And he’s clearly not ashamed by his mom or her addiction. Lukas isn’t really sure what it is exactly he thinks Philip feels towards it, but it isn’t shame. If it was they wouldn’t be here talking about it. “Is she in rehab now?”

   “We’re still trying to find one,” Philip replies, meets Lukas’ eyes and smiles lightly. It looks almost hesitant, and Lukas’ chest tightens from it. “What about you?”

   “It’s just me and my dad. There isn’t really much to say, really.”

   “Is he that bad?” Philip’s eyes furrow and his lips draw into a tight line. Lukas is confused for a second, wondering why Philip suddenly looks so concerned and even a little angry, until it hits him that it must have sounded like his dad beat him or something.

   “Not like that! He’s- we just have a complicated relationship. I know he cares about me he just isn’t the best at, you know, showing it. He’s better at lectures and teaching me how to do farm work than the emotional stuff. We just never have really been that close.” Lukas picks a rock finally and tosses it into the water. Watching it sink into the ground is somewhat satisfying.

   “Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

   “It’s not that bad really,” Lukas shrugs. “It’s always been like this. We’re used to it.”

   “Still,” Philip says as if that’s a complete thought, and doesn’t elaborate any further. Lukas figures it does sound pretty pathetic from the outside, but there wasn’t much he could change about his relationship with his dad. They are the way that they are… it didn’t bother him anymore.

   “Are you going to want me to teach you how to skip rocks or are you just going to keep chucking them?” Lukas asks Philip after a minute or two of silence, wanting to get away from the topic of their parents. He isn’t about to ask about Philip’s father, since he hadn’t mentioned him, and he is glad Philip didn’t ask about what happened to his mom. He never did like talking about it.  

   “Oh, right,” Philip sounds surprised, as if he totally forgot why they showed up to the lake in the first place. “Yeah. Would this rock work?” The rock Philip shows him is large and chunky, and Lukas can’t help but smile in Philip’s ignorance. It’s just one of those things that separates Philip from the rest of the country kids Lukas is so used to. People from Tivoli, Red Hook and even Poughkeepsie can just take one look at Philip and know that he’s not from around here.

   “Not a chance. That one will just sink the the bottom. Find a rock that’s almost completely flat and you’ll be good to go, city boy.” Philip’s eyebrows raise just a bit at the added sort of nickname Lukas gives him, and Lukas is about to panic because maybe that was weird to say and not something normal guys say to each other, but Philip smiles happily at him and Lukas’ shoulders sag with relief.

   Philip turns away from him to find a rock like Lukas described, and when he bends over to pick one up, Lukas really can’t help how his eyes linger on Philip’s ass. He’s kind of used to it by now, he eyes up guys without even realizing it a lot, but for some reason when Philip turns back around he feels a lot more flustered than usual.

   “This work?” The rock Philip holds up looks flat enough and is about as big as his palm so he nods.

   “Okay, come over here and face the water. You’ve got to put your index finger on the edge of the rock.” Lukas feels a bit ridiculous, having to explain how to skip rocks, which is something pretty much everybody in town knew how to do since they were about five. Lukas can even remember his dad teaching him how to do it when he was about five, before his mom died, when they were out fishing. It’s one of his fonder memories that he has with his dad.

   “Good, like that. You kind of have to face the water sideways and spread your legs apart a little,” Lukas instructs, and he can see Philip’s lips quirk up into a smirk after he says that, but he’s not really sure why. For a second it looks like Philip is going to say something, but he stops himself halfway, so Lukas keeps talking. “When you throw it snap your wrist forward to flick it against the water.”

   “You sound like one of those stupid How To essays you have to write for school,” Philip mocks, but he follows Lukas’ instructions and the rock skips the water three times. 

   “Yeah, well my How To speech got you to reach your dreams now hasn’t it?”

   Philip turns back to face him, and his smile looks a little endearing and almost… flirty? Lukas is pretty sure he’s imagining though because there’s no way the rumors about Philip being gay are true. He suspected it at first just because he heard all the other kids in his classes saying it, but after talking to him and hanging out with him, Lukas just didn’t think it was true. He didn’t notice Philip do any of the weird things Lukas does around guys and he just seemed so comfortable in his own skin. A gay guy wouldn’t feel like that… right?

   “Yeah, I guess it did. I should have never underestimated your How To speech skills.”

   “Damn right,” Lukas says in return, then bends over to pick up a rock of his own. He skips it without thinking about it, and it almost feels like it’s second nature to him at this point. “I’m the best rock skipper in town.”

   “That’s kind of sad,” Philip laughs. “I hope you have more titles for yourself than that, because I don’t think I can keep hanging out with a guy that just has an award in  _ skipping rocks. _ ”

   “Hey, you didn’t even know how to skip rocks five minutes ago so don’t give me that,” Lukas jibes, then skips another rock in defiance. “And I have plenty of motocross awards, thank you very much.”

   “Ooh, how macho, I’m very impressed,” Philip teases, but Lukas can tell he actually kind of is. The knowledge that he has impressed Philip with something had Lukas’ heart lightening and stomach squirming in that weird way again, but he likes it. He likes the feeling that Philip gives him when he’s around him. He shouldn’t, but he does.

   “You should be. I bet you don’t even know how to ride one of those things.”

   Philip does that small smirk thing again, and Lukas realizes then how much time he’s spent just staring at Philip’s lips. “You’re not wrong. I wouldn’t mind learning at some point though.”

   “Tough luck. I don’t let anyone ride my bike unless I’m the one driving.” He didn’t even let Courtney do it when she was interested in learning, and Rose never cared enough to even ask so he didn’t worry about her ever. But maybe one day he’d let Philip take it for a spin.

   “Guess I’ll have to find some other guy to teach me how to ride.”

   That was definitely some sort of flirting right? That had some sort of innuendo in it, didn’t it? He’s pretty sure he’s heard girls in school say something similar to that to other guys when they were trying to make them jealous or tease them. But there was no way. There was absolutely no way Philip was flirting with him right now, so Lukas forcefully pushes those thoughts aside and the ice beneath his feet strengthens just a tad.

   “I guess so, but good luck finding one. None of the guys at school know how to ride.” He skips one last rock, then watches at Philip skips one as well. “So, do you wanna go for a swim or do something else? I don’t know about you but I can’t spend an hour or two just skipping rocks.”

   “I’ve got some studying I have to get done, actually,” Philip says, and his eyebrows crinkle a bit at the mention of swimming, but Lukas is sure that’s just because he’d be swimming in the lake and most city kids probably haven’t even imagined swimming in anything other than a public pool. “We could study together if you want.”

   “Oh, yeah. My dad isn’t home tonight, so we could go to my place. You sure Helen and Gabe won’t mind?”

   Philip shrugs as he picks up the helmet next to where Lukas parked the bike. “I’m sure they won’t mind a break from me. They work while I’m at school so I’m sure they don’t mind some alone time at the house. I don’t think they’re used to having a kid in the house yet.”

   “That’s gross, dude,” Lukas says, face crumpling as he gets on the bike and Philip gets behind him. He feels Philip smack his shoulder, and he looks over at him with a faux insulted look on his face. Philip doesn’t even seem to feel bad in the least.

   “Not like that, asshole. I just meant they’re not used to being sort-of-parents.”

   “Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess.”

   Philip rolls his eyes. “Just shut up and drive. We have algebra homework to do and I just want to get it over with.”

   “I’m good at it, I can help,” Lukas says before starting his bike and driving off in the direction of his house.

*******

   Over the next six weeks or so, he and Philip keep hanging out. They usually meet in the tunnel behind the school and either go film Lukas riding, sit out by the lake and talk, go to the barn at Helen and Gabe’s to listen to music and talk, or go to Lukas’ place when his dad isn’t home to study.

   The first time Lukas had Philip in his room, just to study, he felt a sort of nervousness he never felt before when he brought Rose into his room to study with her, he just never thought anything of it. His mind never wandered to doing anything other than study with Rose in his bedroom, even when his dad wasn’t home and they had the entire place to themselves. He can’t even remember really making out with her when they were alone in his room, but they have never really been the type of couple to make out. Lukas isn’t really sure if that’s normal or not, but Rose has never mentioned it, so he assumes that it’s fine.

   But when he has Philip in his bedroom with the entire rest of the house empty, Lukas just feels jumpy. It’s almost as if he expects something to happen even though he knows it won’t. Even after the first couple times of studying in his bedroom, the feeling never completely vacates his mind. When Philip sits close to him on the bed, his heart races in his chest and it’s hard to concentrate on any subjects, even the ones he’s good at, like math. And when their fingers occasionally brush against each other over textbook pages when one of them is trying to explain something, it’s as if all the nerve endings in Lukas’ hand are shocked. He doesn’t understand the feelings at all, but he never stops their study sessions; he doesn’t want to.

   When they meet up in the barn at Helen and Gabe’s house, they always hang out in the loft with all the hay talking and sharing music. Lukas was happy to learn that Philip’s music taste was a lot similar to his, and he even discovered a lot of new bands because of it. It was nice meeting somebody with the same music taste as him because almost everybody at his school just listened to country music. Lukas didn’t mind all country music, he even liked a couple songs, but he couldn’t stand an entire playlist of it.

   They didn’t do much more than that, and on Thursday after school, he picked Philip up at the tunnel to go and shoot more footage of Lukas riding. Everything goes as normal, and Philip films him for about ten minutes and it’s one of Lukas’ better days for riding. He feels more confident today for some reason, and he hopes it really shows in the footage.

   He rides back over to Philip, and Philip, used to the routine by now is already putting on his helmet. Lukas had gotten an extra one for Philip after they spent a lot of time together on his bike, and to be honest, he really likes the way the helmet looks on Philip.

   “Dude! Did you catch me throw that sick whip?”

   Philip doesn’t respond over the roar of the engine, but he climbs onto the back of the bike and wrapped his arms around his waist. Over the past few weeks, they had gotten comfortable enough with each other for him to hold onto Lukas properly instead of just putting his hands on Lukas’ waist.

   He drives them over in the direction of his dad’s cabin. They’ve hung out there a couple of times before, when his dad was at the house and Helen and Gabe were home. They didn’t do it often, since their respective parents (or parent and foster parents) were almost never home during the afternoon and evening, but even though it was only Thursday, the cabin was close by and he’s feeling tempted by the beers that he knows his dad keeps in the mini-fridge.

   When he’s approaching the cabin, he jumps over a bathtub and after Philip gets off his bike, Lukas does a little wheelie when he’s parking. He tells himself it’s not to impress Philip, but this feeling in his chest of wanting Philip to notice the few talents he has always overrides those thoughts.

   “Did we just jump over a bathtub?” Philip asks as he’s taking his helmet off, and there’s laughter in his voice that makes that adrenaline Lukas is feeling nearly skyrocket.

   “Yeah, man,” Lukas replies, his voice muffled by his helmet.

   “Damn dude! That was insane!”

   “Yeah. Hey, post that shit on my channel,” Lukas says, nodding towards the phone in Philip’s hands. They stand in silence for a minute or so while Philip works on uploading the video, which takes longer than it really should because Philip is only getting one bar all the way out here.

   When they get inside the cabin, Lukas goes straight to the mini fridge on the wall opposite of the bed that Philip sits on, in search of a couple beers. He knows that his dad always keeps a few up here for when he goes fishing during the weekends that he’s free, and he and Philip always sneak a couple when they venture up here. This time though, he’s disappointed to see only one sitting on the shelf.

   “Ugh. Only one. Shit,” he says, his voice low and clearly put out, but Philip doesn’t say anything so he guesses that he didn’t hear him. “Don’t drop it,” is his only warning as he turns around and tosses it lightly in Philip’s direction, and as expected, watches it fall to the hardwood flooring.

   “Nice,” Lukas sarcastically says when Philip looks up at him with a smile before leaning down to pick it up. He walks back over to the bed while Philip twists open the cap, and as the foam spills out all over his hand. “Oh, come on! No!”

   “Are you kidding me?” Philip asks rhetorically as he shakes the wet stickiness off his hand, looking over at Lukas with a raised brow. “Thanks. Damn.” He takes a swig of the beer then passes it off to Lukas, who wipes the top off with the hem of his shirt without even really thinking about it.

   “Hey, how many hits I get?”

   “Uh, twenty-two in less than five minutes. That’s not bad, actually.”

   “No, damn, that’s good,” Lukas says after pulling the beer away from his lips. “Any comments?”

   “Rose says that you're dope,” Philip says, stretching out the word slightly and pops the ‘p’ at the end almost mockingly.

   “Yeah, whatever,” Lukas says, uncaringly because he honestly doesn’t care what Rose has to say about his riding. She doesn’t understand the first thing about it, and even though he does like her more than he thought he would when he first started dating her, he really doesn’t care much about what she has to say, especially when it comes to his dream career.

   “You know that kid Tommy at school? He’s got a DSLR and I’m gonna borrow it. The resolution on it is so sick, it’s so much better than this,” Philip says while they’re still watching the video. Lukas really has no idea what a DSLR or even what resolution really is, and he thinks that Philip’s videos looks good no matter what the quality of it is.

   “My sponsors are going to flip out over this.”

   “Really? It’s that good?”

   “Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. I’ve never had footage this good. I mean it’s… you- I mean you’re amazing,” Lukas says, staring at the side of Philip’s face as he speaks. When Philip turns his head to look at him, Lukas’ eyes meet his and he suddenly realizes how fond he just now sounded. Shit.

   Normal guys don’t say ‘you’re amazing’ to another one of their friends. He isn’t even sure if too many guys have said it to their girlfriends, but here he is, sitting with Philip alone in his dad’s cabin and saying that he’s amazing in the fondest voice imaginable.

   “I mean you’re awesome,” Lukas says, trying to fix whatever it was he just fucked up, but Philip is still staring at him awestruck with his eyes wide and mouth dropped open. Lukas stares at Philip’s lips for a moment too long, and this overwhelming desire abruptly seizes hold of him, and he leans in just the teaniest bit to press their mouths together. But he pauses midway, eyes drifting up away from Philip’s lips to his eyes, then Philip’s staring at his mouth with clear intention and leaning in too.

   Lukas almost leans in to meet him in the middle, but panic grips his heart tightly until his throat knots and he reaches out to slap Philip away from him before he could even think about what he was doing. Everything, all the sick thoughts and feelings he’s been working tirelessly on to bury that made him feel dirty and  _ wrong,  _ all come rushing back up so fast that Lukas thinks he’s going to puke for a second. But, instead of vomiting all over Philip and himself, words burst out of him angry and delirious.

   “The hell are you doing?”

   He’s not sure if the words are really directed at Philip, because he could be talking to himself now too, but Philip doesn’t need to know that.

   “N-nothing, I’m not-”

   Philip cuts himself off short as he sits up completely on the bed again, and he determinedly won’t look anywhere in Lukas’ direction. Lukas stares at the back of Philip’s head for a second, leaning forward ever so slightly to try and get a glimpse of his face so he could see what kind of expression Philip has, but all he can see is the clenching of Philip’s jaw which is a clear indication he’s upset.

   “Okay,” Lukas breathes out quietly, almost panting as he tries to catch his breath which had been lost to the panic. He could feel the familiar quickening of his heart, pounding in his skull and tightening in his stomach of an oncoming panic attack, and if he doesn’t say anything he’ll lose himself completely to it.

   “So, uh… so I-I got a ton of air on those jumps, huh?” he manages to say, and he surprises himself with how collected he sounds. Maybe if he just plays it cool they can both convince themselves that nothing ever happened and just go back to being friends. “Yeah, those whips aren’t easy.”

   He’s met with silence for a few moments, and he scratches at the skin on his palm as he nervously waits for Philip to say something,  _ anything.  _ But Philip won’t look at him for a long while, and when he does, everything about him looks tense and screams tension. There’s no way they’re going to recover from this.

   “I didn’t say they were,” Philip says, finding the pillow on the bed much more interesting than anything else.

   “I thought you were into motocross?” Lukas says quietly, almost hesitantly, because now he’s almost fearfully waiting for his reply.

   Philip’s quiet for another long period of seconds, then he pockets his phone in his jacket and says “no” quickly, his tone short. “I’m not actually, so-”

   Philip goes to stand up, and Lukas’ eyes widen as a new kind of panic blooms up in his chest, and his arm shoots out this time to grip Philip’s upper arm and pull him back onto the bed. “H-hey, hey sit down, sit down,” he says, his voice still quiet, as if, if he raises it any louder Philip will run out of the cabin and never look back. To his relief, Philip plops back down onto the bed, although he seems reluctant to do so.

   Philip still won’t look directly at him, and Lukas looks around the cabin and outside the window in desperate search for something to say. His eyes settle on Philip’s upper arm, and he reached up to grip the leather of Philip’s jacket without giving himself time to second guess what he’s doing. He’s just going off his instincts now.

   With his other hand he lightly touches Philip’s jaw and turns his face to him, just glad to see Philip actually look at him. He doesn’t look angry like Lukas expected, he has that same kind of awed expression as he did when Lukas let it slip that he thought he was amazing.

   Lukas shuts off his screaming brain and kisses him.

   It’s just a peck, really nothing else but brushing their lips together just enough to make it fall under the category of a kiss. When he pulls back, Philip’s expression hasn’t changed and Lukas’ throat is still knotted tightly with a kind of wild panic he’s never felt before, but for some reason, having Philip’s skin pressing to his hand subdues the panic just as much as it fuels it.

   When they kiss again they both lean into it. Philip’s body seems to catch up with his brain and what’s happening, because Lukas can feel one arm resting on his back and the other cupping the side of his neck. Lukas nearly completely loses himself at the first swipe of tongue, but he pulls himself out of the kiss before he can.

   He opens his mouth to say something, maybe that he shouldn’t be doing this or he isn’t  _ gay  _ or that he doesn’t like kissing him, but when his eyes settle back onto Philip’s face the words dry up on his tongue. He’s reaching up to cup Philip’s face in his hands, his thumbs resting on his cheeks as he allows himself to admire Philip in ways he never let himself before.

   Philip really is beautiful. Lukas never would normally use that word to describe any other guy, for more than just the reason that he would never let himself admire a guy like that usually. But, with that guy that he had a weird crush on in middle school that he can’t even remember the name of now, he wouldn’t have described him as beautiful. Maybe cute or handsome, but not beautiful. But Philip… something about him really just takes Lukas’ breath away.

   He’s so captivated by him that he leans in again after just a brief moment of hesitation, a quiet gulp because he’s terrified by how much he wants Philip right now, but despite the fear he kisses him again. Then he pulls back again just a few moments later, but Philip doesn’t even seem surprised by it.

   “W-wait what if someone sees us?” Lukas asks, his hands still gripping at Philip’s shoulders because he doesn’t want to let go of him yet, even as he looks out the window, sure that he’s going to see someone from school or his dad standing right there staring at him kiss Philip through the window.

   “Yeah, like a squirrel?”

   And, yeah, Lukas knows that he sounds ridiculous by asking if someone sees them, but he can’t help it. He’s hidden this part of him so much throughout the years, and now that he’s let it slip for the first time, he can’t help but think that for sure somebody is going to catch him with his guard down, lost in Philip.

   “No one’s going to know about this,” Lukas says with finality in his tone, looking in Philip’s eyes so he knows he’s serious. He doesn’t let Philip’s eyes or mouth distract him this time, “because you’re never going to tell them.”

   “Yeah, okay, whatever,” Philip says, his voice barely masking his slight annoyance at this point, and the words are barely out of his mouth before they’re kissing again, with more hunger than before.

   Somehow hours pass of them just making out, and the sun has set by the time Lukas has Philip’s body pressed underneath his and both their shirts off. He isn’t really sure when exactly they removed one another from their shirts, but at the moment Lukas can’t bring himself to think too much about it, much less even care. All he cares about right now is Philip’s heavy, hot breath against his cheek and neck, and his own lips making their way down Philip’s neck and chest.

   He pulls away with a low sound in the back of his throat, and he just stares at Philip’s face as he trails his hand up from the middle of Philip’s stomach back up to his face. It’s dark in the cabin, which is something he’s kind of relieved about because if it was bright inside he’s sure reality would be hitting him hard in a few seconds, but it also means that he can’t see Philip’s face all that well. That kind of annoys him. However, he can tell that Philip’s face is flushed by the heat beneath his palm, and the pad of his thumb strokes along the edge of the other boy’s cheekbone unconsciously.

   The movement is a bit too intimate, just a bit too tender, but the touch somehow coaxes Philip to pick his head up off the pillow to push their mouths together again. The kiss is wet, and it’s mostly tongues and breath than anything else at this point, but the heat of Philip’s skin beneath his hands, and each sensual movement of Philip’s body leaves Lukas’ jeans feeling uncomfortably tight.

   His hand drifts down to his crotch, gripping himself through the rough material of his jeans, and he presses down against Philip’s hip, his mind going blissfully fuzzy when Philip’s whispered voice pulls him out of it.

   “Hey.”

   “Huh?” Lukas almost slurs, pulling himself away from Philip when he feels something that feels like foil scratch against his chest, and he stares dumbfounded at the condom between Philip’s fingers.

   No way. No way; he won’t, he  _ can’t  _ do something like that with Philip. Making out is one thing, and grinding down against him is also another that’s almost crossing a line, but to actually do  _ that  _ with Philip is going crossing into something he would never be able to come back from. He can’t do that. He can’t afford to do that, no matter how much his body wants him to.

   “Are you kidding me? I’m not doing that!” he says, slapping Philip’s hand with the condom in it away before he can somehow convince himself that he should just take the condom and do whatever it was Philip wanted.

   There’s a silence between them, that’s really just filled with their panting, as Lukas looks out the window and tries to calm himself down. The knot of trepidation is back in his throat, and he wants to get rid of it before it draws him off of Philip’s lap and onto his bike where he can drive far, far away from Philip then pretend none of this ever happened. He doesn’t want to do that. He wants to stay, even when that’s the last thing he should want.

   “Sorry,” Philip starts, and Lukas turns to look at him again, pushing hair out of his face as he does. “It’s just everyone in the city carries one.”

   Lukas’ eyebrows furrow, and he scans Philip’s face as he wonders how Philip could possibly know that everybody in the city carries a condom around with them. Lukas knows that his friends do, but that’s just because they bragged to it about him since it meant they were getting laid when Lukas wasn’t. And that meant-

   “You’ve done this before?”

   “Yeah. It’s okay,” Philip says when he must see something in Lukas’ expression. Lukas isn’t really sure what it is, but he knows that he doesn’t like the thought of some other guy touching Philip in the same way he is now, so maybe it’s something like jealousy. But he’s never felt jealousy directed toward someone in this way before so he could be completely wrong.

  “It’s okay, it’s fine,” Philip keeps saying, then loops his arm around the back of Lukas’ neck to pull him back down against him. Lukas lets those words comfort him in some way he’s never felt before; to hear ‘it’s fine’ right before pushing his body and mouth against another guy calms that beast of insecurity and self-disgust inside him for the first time since it materialized inside of him.

  He’s beginning to lose himself in Philip once again, and his eyes are fluttering as his mouth drops open when Philip’s lips find their way to his neck, and he’s curling his fingers into Philip’s messy hair when he hears the crunch of gravel outside.

  He immediately jerks and jumps up, that sort of calm lustful passion is gone in an instant, and all he can feel is panic. “Shit, it’s my dad,” is all he can manage to say as he grabs his shirt from the foot of the bed as fast as he can. He pulls it over his head as Philip leans himself up on his elbows to look out the window.

  “Lukas, that’s-”

  Lukas leans closer to the window, and realizes, that through the bright glow of headlights, that’s not his dad’s SUV or truck. In fact, he isn’t sure if he’s ever seen that car before, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. He doesn’t have much time to ponder over whose car that is before three guys are getting out of the car. Two go off in a few different directions, as if they’re scanning the area, and one goes to the back of the trunk.

  “Who are those guys?”

  “I don’t know,” Lukas replies honestly, and he keeps his voice hushed, a different kind of fear filling him than the one when he thought his dad had pulled up. He sees two guys pull a fourth out of the trunk, and his eyes widen at the sight. “G-get under the bed,” he stammers, pushing on Philip’s bare shoulder urgently, “now!”

  While Philip drops to the floor and crawls under the bed, he hides himself in the closet on the opposite wall farthest from the door. He pulls the shutters of the closet door open just enough so he can see out as soon as he hears the door open and the shuffle of feet and muffled voices. The lights cut on and one of the guys orders another to close the door.

  Lukas’ heart is in his throat, and he can hear the guys talking to one another, mostly arguing from the sound of it, but none of it really registers. All he can feel is this confused sort of terror flood his entire being, rooting him to the spot until he can’t move. Then, there’s a gun being pointed at the guy from the trunk and Lukas’ entire body locks so much he doesn’t even jump when the first gunshot goes off, echoing throughout the cabin, but his ears start ringing.

  But it’s not the guy from the trunk that collapses, it’s the one who first pointed his gun, the one who’d been standing directly in front of the closet. Then another one is shot through the chest and Lukas’ eyes fight to close, but he can’t stop looking away from the horrific scene unfolding before him. And then, the shirtless man is standing in front of the last one still alive, aiming the gun at his forehead.

  The threatened man says something about being with the FBI, but before Lukas can even begin to fully register that, another gunshot is fired and the last one is dead, falling down right in front of Philip from where he’s hidden under the bed.

  There’s complete silence for about three seconds, and Lukas almost thinks that the last standing man will leave the cabin and them, but then he’s moving slowly and deliberately towards the bed, his gun cocked and held low in front of him. Without even thinking about what he is doing, Lukas begins to quietly push the closet door open, his eyes wide and solely focused from where the murderer is standing, about to find Philip.

  Lukas goes unnoticed by the man, and by the time he has the closet door fully open, the man has flipped the covers up and Philip is shakingly begging for his life. Lukas pauses for the briefest second, his body unsure of what to do even though his mind is screaming at him to  _ move, he’s going to shoot Philip!,  _ so when the man points his gun at Philip and presses his finger to the trigger, Lukas moves faster than he ever has before.

  His fingers grip tightly onto an iron frying pan on the side of him and he hits the shirtless man over the head with it. The man falls, Philip jumps, but then the man looks up at him and Lukas hurriedly crashes the pan down against the side his face. And when the man collapses, he stays down this time.

  “Philip come on! We gotta go, let’s go!” he shouts, tugging at Philip’s arm and dragging him forcibly out from under the bed before the guy has the chance to wake up and kill them both. When Philip’s standing and grabbing his jacket, Lukas grabs the gun the man had used up from the floor then flees from the cabin. He flings the frying pan somewhere into the bushes then shoots at the window of the cabin when he thinks he heard movement from inside.

  “Dude, get the bike- go get the bike!” Philip says so fast it’s almost gibberish as he takes the gun from Lukas, but he understands him so he rushes for their only chance of fast escape. As soon as he’s revving up the engine, he feels Philip’s body against his back and arms wrapped tighter around his waist than ever before, and Lukas drives the bike faster than he ever has in his life.

  He drives them out nearly five miles away from the cabin until he stops in front of a lake, and both he and Philip hop off the bike. Lukas lets the bike crash the the ground without a care, because he’s pretty sure he’s about to puke, but when Philip pulls the gun out of his jacket, he snatches it out of his hands.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Listen to me. We can’t say anything to anyone,” Lukas says, wiping the gun off with the hem of his shirt in an attempt to clean off any fingerprints.

  “Are you kidding me? He was gonna kill us, who would blame you for killing him?” Philip says, his voice shaky and clearly misunderstanding why they could never tell anyone about what they saw.

  “You don’t get it! I’m not  _ gay  _ like you!” he shouts, the word ‘gay’ coming out of his mouth with disgust and venom, the same way so many guys around school say it. “No one even knows we talk, got it?”

  Lukas feels his eyes burning and he sniffles, and tries to ignore the pain in his chest when Philip looks at him with shocked hurt. He distracts himself with more wiping of the gun until he hears rustling in the treeline behind Philip half a second later.

  “It’s him!”

  He points the gun at the treeline where he heard the noise and Philip leaps behind him, and he shoots off three rounds into the night until he realizes what exactly it was he was shooting at.

  “Is- is that a deer?”

  “It’s a deer,” Philip confirms for him. “We gotta tell Helen.”

  “Tell her what? That we were at the cabin, _naked_? No! N-never gonna happen.” The last part of his sentence comes out as if he’s drunk, and he sways on his feet just slightly.

  “Okay, well, I won’t say anything,” Philip says, subdued.

  Lukas’ hands shake as he continues to fiddle with the gun, and a thank you forms on his tongue but he forces it back and throws the gun into the pond, only satisfied when he hears the splash. When he turns around to face Philip, he starts talking.

  “He was gonna kill me if you hadn’t stopped him… if y-you hadn’t-”

  Lukas pulls Philip into a hug before Philip can even finish talking because he doesn’t want to hear about him getting shot or being killed. They are safe now. The guy is dead. And Philip is alive. Philip is  _ alive  _ and sobbing in his arms just as much as Lukas was sobbing in his.

  When they pull themselves together as much as they possibly can, they get back on the bike and Lukas rides back into town. He’s about to turn onto the street where Helen and Gabe’s house is when Philip shakes his head and yells over the engine for him to drop him off at the bus station instead. It’s early enough in the morning for the buses to be running, and Lukas drops him off at the bus station without asking any questions.

  He knows Philip’s mom is in the city, and he knows how much Philip must need her. If Lukas had his mom to go to now he knows he would run to her as fast as he possibly could, wherever she was.

  He drives back to his house, sneaks back into his room, somehow being quiet enough to not get caught by his dad, and collapses onto his bed. He has two hours before he has to be up for school, and he should get some sleep, but there’s no way he possibly can with the echo of gunshots ricocheting off his brain and the sight of dead bodies burning behind his eyelids each time he blinks.

  As he lies awake, scrolling through YouTube on his phone for any kind of distraction, absolutely refusing to sleep. He’s never sleeping again.  


	6. Bruised Knuckles and Nonexistent Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the morning after the murder, and Lukas is still reeling from it. He's also still reeling from this uncontrollable desire to kiss and touch Philip even though that should be the absolute last thing he wants to do.

**Part Six**

**Bruised Knuckles and Nonexistent Choices**

**“Cuz I have hella feelings for you, I act like I don’t fucking care, cuz I’m so fucking scared”**

**idfc by blackbear**

 

  It’s about six-thirty, an hour before Lukas is supposed to be up in the morning for school, when he hears his dad leave the house. He isn’t sure where he’s going, but he’s got a feeling that he’s going to be going to Poughkeepsie for more supplies for the farm that Tivoli and Red Hook just don’t provide. Being alone in the house used to be something Lukas was completely comfortable with, why wouldn’t he be at his age?, but now, there’s this twisting unease that curls tightly in his stomach and leaves him suffocated. 

  He abandons the YouTube videos that weren’t even helping distract him much at all in the first place, to go take a shower. The shower always makes him feel better when he’s anxious, and now it really isn’t any different, but this time it’s a dissimilar type of anxiety he’s feeling. It isn’t the type of anxiety that can be numbed with a shower, it’s like a plaguing thing always on the back of his mind. Even so, the small size of the tub is almost comforting when most would find it confining, and though there’s only a shower curtain blocking him off from the rest of the world, it feels as if it’s a lot more than that. The anxiety never leaves and instead it stays a constant tight knot in his stomach. 

 

  He scrubs away at his skin with his body wash as if he’s trying to cleanse himself of a murder of three men he didn’t commit, and at the same time, he’s trying to scrape away the wrongness of Philip’s heated touch and lips that he can’t stop himself from enjoying. He’s sick inside, he knows that more than anybody else ever will, but for a second last night he felt like maybe he wasn’t. He needs to rid himself of that feeling of false security before it becomes the very thing that rips him to shreds. 

 

  When his skin is red and stinging from the wash cloth, he quits trying to clean himself so violently. He’s never going to rid of anything this way anyway. And he’s not wanting to try and physically harm himself in a fruitless attempt to do so. He climbs out of the shower, gets dressed then goes downstairs to clean the mud out of the tires of his bike. If he worked so hard to clean himself off, he might as well successfully scrape away all the mud from the crime scene out of his tires. 

 

  He’s halfway done, and is almost able to start thinking about something else other than dead men or Philip’s mouth and body, when he heard his dad’s truck pull up in front of the barn shed. He looks up, confused as to why his dad is driving his truck around town instead of that brand new SUV he just bought. He never drives his truck unless he’s doing something farm related or going fishing-  _ shit.  _

 

_   “ _ Lukas!” his dad calls out as soon as he’s out of his truck, and there’s an edge to his voice. It isn’t angry or disappointed like Lukas is used to hearing, it’s just something he can’t really put his finger on. “Did you go riding up at the cabin last night? Or yesterday at all.”

 

  “N-no, Dad. Why?” His breath catches in his throat, and his heart is racing in his chest again. Logically he knows that his dad can’t see any remnants of Philip’s kisses on his mouth or skin, or the blood of murder victims that hadn’t even sprayed onto him, but he can’t help but feel as if he’s wide open on display for all those to see. His dad’s scrutinizing eyes aren’t helping in the least. 

 

  “There were some men murdered inside the cabin sometime yesterday. Sheriff Torrance told me it had to do with gang related issues, so it’s nothing for us to worry about, but I know you go out there riding a lot.” 

 

  Lukas swallows thickly and he scrapes particularly hard at the mud in his tires, and the almost-fresh mud falls away without a fight. He wishes it gave a little resistance, at least then he would be able to pretend to be busy with something for longer. “There hasn’t ever been a murder here before, has there?” 

 

  “Not for a very long time; you hadn’t even been born yet when the last one happened. But, like I said, there’s no random murderer on the loose. It’s all gang related from all the way in Poughkeepsie.” His dad pauses, like he’s trying to come up with something to say that would be reassuring or another thing similar to that, but Lukas doesn’t look at him and just keeps scrubbing at his bike, so his dad doesn’t try to think of whatever he’s wanting to for very long. 

 

  “Now, it’s real ugly over there, nothing I want you to see. So, for now, Aquari, I don’t want you riding over there anymore,” his dad says, leaning over to pat on the side of Lukas’ bike, calling it the stupid name Lukas had given it when he first got it when he was fifteen. 

 

  “Okay Dad.” 

 

  “You’re good though, right?” his dad asks, walking over behind him to slap his hands to his shoulders as Lukas continues rubbing at the dirtied metal on his bike. 

 

  Lukas huffs a little laugh and nods even though all he wants to do right now puke. Or cry. Or scream. “Y-yeah, Dad.” 

 

  “Okay,” is all his dad adds before he’s walking out of the barn shed and getting in his truck to park it. Lukas pulls the rag he was using to clean his bike away and sighs heavily, his shoulders sagging even though the rest of him feels taut. 

 

  The bodies have been found and it’s been confirmed as just gang-related violence. It’s over. He’s fine, he’s safe and so is Philip. There’s absolutely no need for anyone to ever know he was there with Philip. He should feel relieved, but there’s this nauseating knot in his stomach that won’t go away, and with each passing minute he feels more and more on edge, as if somebody is after him. He hates it. 

 

  He grabs his backpack off the table inside the shed and gets on his bike, ready to just get away from his house for a bit. Normally school would be the last place he would want to be when he feels a panic attack coming on strong, but now, it feels like the only thing that can calm him. Like, the only way he can reassure himself that everything is normal is if he goes to school, talks to Chad and the rest of his friends, kisses Rose a few times, deals with the same asshole teachers and falls into the same old routine. He saw a murder, sure, but he’s hidden so many things about him from the people closest to him that this should be no harder.  _ And it isn’t,  _ he tells himself as he mounts his bike and starts off down the road. 

 

  He’s halfway down the dirt road that their house is down, when he pulls over, stops his bike, yanks off his helmet and stumbles over a couple of feet to puke into the uncut grass on the side of the road. Nothing much else besides bile comes up, but he gags and heaves for a good minute or two before his body understands that he's got nothing left to throw up. By the time he's finished, he's clammy and his knees are shaking with a sudden exhaustion. He's tired, so tired. His body sways dangerously as his eyes slip closed, but as soon as they do, a gunshot rings out deafeningly inside his head, three dead bodies crumple lifelessly to the ground and a fourth lies facedown with the right side of his head caved in. His entire body startles and his eyes fly open with the force of it; his stomach rolls violently with the very real threat of making him dry heave for another two minutes. He swallows imaginary bile down to rid himself of the nausea then trips back over to his bike.

 

  Hiding the fact he’s seen a triple-homicide is different than hiding the fact that his gaze lingers on guys too often and that he doesn’t trust himself so much around cute guys that he doesn’t feel comfortable without a whole stretch of careful space between him and them, or that the first time he finally let that careful space diminish he had his mouth pressed against another dude’s and his hands all over his body. Both things are just as life-devastating to admit the truth to, but concealing that he’s a witness to a murder in cold blood is much different. But he has to do it because both of these life ruining things are wrapped up in each other and letting just one slip will leave the whole thing to unravel. If it unravels, Lukas will just wind up spiralling out with it. 

 

  When he gets to school, no one looks at him differently. They shouldn’t because they have no idea about anything that happened to him last night, but he can’t help but feel as if their gazes should persist on him until holes are burnt out through his entire body. None of this happens. People greet him and people look over to glance at him as he passes by like with anyone else, but nothing is out of the ordinary. Lukas needs it to stay this way. 

 

  “Morning, baby,” Rose says to him when he approaches her and Chad who were standing in front of the school entrance. Once he’s close enough, she leans up onto her toes so she can press her mouth to his, and as usual, nothing is sparked inside him. He pecks her back in a way that reflects his numbness to her charm, but maybe she just thinks that he’s sleepy. When he pulls away and looks at her, she smiles up at him warmly, and he returns it with the best smile he can manage. 

 

  He cheated on her last night he realizes with an abrupt sort of jerk. With a guy. He doesn't know if that makes the act any less excusable in her eyes or not. He doubts it; it probably makes it ten times worse. He feels guilty. He does. But. Just not as much as he probably should. It isn't because he thinks cheating is an okay thing to do or anything that should be praised, and of course he knows that she doesn't deserve to be cheated on at all, but he just- he doesn't know. He doesn't care. Maybe his apathy is off the charts because seeing three guys getting shot and crushing another one's skull in must do that to a person. It isn't a far-fetched theory in his opinion.

 

  “Ugh, can you guys have your disgusting sappy moments some place else. You’re making me sick,” Chad complains from in front of him, and Lukas turns to look at his friend instead. He personally wouldn’t have just called the moment with Rose he had sappy because all he was thinking about was how he cheated on her with Philip, but maybe he’s that much of a bad boyfriend that he looks sappy now when he thinks about how he cheated on her. 

 

  “You’re just jealous,” Rose snips at Chad, and when Chad is saying something in return, Lukas misses it because the slight bump he felt on his shoulder took all his attention away. He glances after Philip, he knew it was Philip before he even saw him, and the other boy looks over at him for just half a second, but then Lukas is looking away in the pretence of moving hair out of his face without using his hands. 

 

  “What the hell was that?” Rose asks beside him, and she’s got this snooty look on her face as she gestures over at Philip’s retreating back. Lukas feels irrationally angry at her, but he keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t say anything he regrets. To Rose, Philip is a nobody, and she suspects that Philip is a nobody to him to. And Philip  _ should  _ be a nobody to him, but he isn’t. He’s the most  _ somebody  _ to him than anybody else ever has been before. She can’t help that she doesn’t know that when she hardly knows anything about him in the first place. 

 

  He lies to her too much. He lies to her about things he probably doesn’t even need to, but he does anyway because he’s always scared that she could find out things about him she never should through the small truths he does tell her. He’s always scared. He’s scared of everybody around him, especially those closest to him, including himself. Most of all himself; he terrifies himself to the point he wishes he had a different skin, mind, and body. He wishes he was somebody else entirely. 

 

  “You’ve heard the rumors about him, haven’t you?” Chad asks, and his question is directed to Lukas so he looks at his friend, doing his best to not slip into his headspace again. “How his mom is a dead junkie. Apparently she overdosed. I think he’s probably a fag, too. He looks like the type.” 

 

  “What’s the type?” Rose asks from beside Lukas, her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyebrows are pinched together and she looks pissed, and for a second something warm and hopeful blooms in Lukas’ chest. Maybe Rose doesn’t find gay guys- 

 

  “You know, the kind of guy to get on his knees and sucks a dick. It’s fucking gross.” 

 

  “Oh, so are girls gross because they do the same thing?” 

 

  Oh. It’s one of her feminist issues. 

 

  “What the fuck, Rose? Don’t turn this into one of your dumb feminist things. It’s hot when a chick does it, but you have to admit picturing a guy doing it to another guy is disgusting.” 

 

  Something white-hot pierces through Lukas’ chest and his face feels like it’s on fire. He hasn’t ever pictured it personally, mostly due to the reason he knows what kind of treacherous territory he’d be crossing if he did, but even without having to picture it he knows it doesn’t sound  _ disgusting  _ to him. What he did with Philip last night in the cabin… that’s enough to prove he’d find it far from gross. 

 

  “ _ Dumb feminist things?”  _ Rose’s voice shrills, and it knocks Lukas out of his thoughts so jarringly he feels dizzy. “It’s not dumb! You’re looking at girls like some sort of objects now! We’re not here just to give you pleasure, you know.” 

 

  “Clearly,” Chad comments drily, his expression bored. 

 

  Rose does a sort of scoff sound, and she whirls to face Lukas. “Are you not going to back me up on this?” 

 

  “I have to go get something from my locker,” Lukas says instead of answering her question directly. He’s never understood her huge stance on feminist issues like this so he’s not about to try and back her up or tear her arguments down over it. He’s not a chick, he doesn’t know where she’s coming from on most of it, anyway. 

 

  “Seriously, Lukas? Do you agree with him or something?” 

 

  “If I did I wouldn’t have agreed to wait to have sex with you now would I?” Lukas snaps. He doesn’t have the energy, both physical and emotional, to deal with one of Rose’s little meltdowns over stupid shit. “I’ll see you in class.” 

 

  He leaves Rose and Chad in front of the school and heads inside, heading straight to his locker to grab the morning textbooks and notebooks he would need. After grabbing them, he zips up his backpack, and puts it back on his shoulders. As soon as he’s shutting his locker, he catches sight of Philip in his peripherals and turns to face him, a little blown away that he would come up and talk to him at school, especially after last night. 

 

  “Hey, Helen said that she found three bodies in the cabin,” is the first thing Philip says to him. 

 

  Lukas’ eyes widen and he leans in a little closer to Philip for just a moment. “Wait,” he says, then he starts turning away, eager to get as far away from Philip as possible as he grits out “you told Helen?” 

 

  He’s walking away when he hears Philip mutter something in confusion and then rush up to continue. “Nonono, li-listen to me. There were four guys in the cabin, right?” 

 

  Once Philip has the question out of his mouth, Lukas turns to look at him because Philip sounds genuinely concerned and confused. The cold, gripping fear from earlier this morning over someone coming after them rearing it’s ugly head once again. 

 

  “Yeah. So?” 

 

  “So, why did Helen only find three bodies?” 

 

  Lukas lowers his eyes to the floor and takes in a shuddering breath through clenched teeth, trying to come up with a logical explanation for why Helen would have only found three bodies inside the cabin. There were three men that were definitely shot, and there’s no way that they had survived the wounds they received, even if they ended up bleeding out when he and Philip fled. So that means- 

 

  “Hey, who’s your new friend?” 

 

  Lukas leans forward quickly and pushes his arm up against Philip’s chest, gently pushing him back while muttering “get outta here” before anybody else could say something. But people are starting to gather around them and Philip is  _ still  _ talking, not giving a shit about whether or not everybody could see and hear them. 

 

  Everything except the crowd’s voices and laughter is ringing in Lukas’ ears, and he can’t hear a word Philip is saying anymore. Lukas focuses on Philip’s face again, and his eyebrows are drawn together and he’s clearly still talking about the bodies in the cabin.  _ Shut up shut up shut up! People are gonna hear and they’re going to know what we-  _

 

  “Okay,” he’s saying in a sort of chuckle before his arm is swinging out and his knuckles make harsh contact with the side of Philip’s face. Better for people to think they hate each other than think that they’re doing something  _ disgusting and wrong and sinful and immoral  _ together. He’d rather have people know Philip’s face is bruised because of his fist instead of knowing that Philip’s lips are a little more red and kiss-bruised today because they’d been rolling around half naked on a bed together.  _ Anything  _ in the world would be better than everyone around them knowing that. 

 

  Unexpectedly, Philip collects himself and his face twists into something dark and angry and almost  _ primal  _ that Lukas has never seen before. Philip may be his friend outside of school, but he’s also a city kid that he just punched in the face- a city kid who grew up in the slums, a city kid that knew how to fight. Before Lukas can really freak out, Philip is pushing him back roughly and slamming him against the corner of a group of lockers on the opposite wall. 

 

  Air rushes out of Lukas’ lungs from the impact, but thankfully his backpack managed to block the initial slam. He grips onto Philip’s forearms and unceremoniously tackles him down onto the tiled floor below them, then swings his arm back to land another punch to Philip’s cheek. A teacher is rushing over to them, shouting at them to break it up, when Philip flips them over so roughly that Lukas’ head crashes into the floor. 

 

  “Get off me, bitch!” he yells as he’s blinking the black spots out of his vision, and Philip is about to get his own punch in when the principal drags Philip off of him, and Rose is rushing forward to help Lukas up. 

 

  “You two, in my office.  _ Now!”  _ The principal says forcefully, no room for argument, and Lukas sneers at Philip as he passes him to get to the office, hitting his shoulder as he does. “Everyone else get to your first period!” 

 

*******

 

  His dad and Helen and Gabe are called after Lukas gives Mr. Lewis a bullshit excuse for the fight. He’d told him that Philip had been talking shit about Chad and Rose, and Philip never broke in to defend himself, so he just kept going along with it.

 

  He and Philip are sent home early as a suspension, but are expected to return tomorrow morning as per usual. When his dad picks him up, he isn’t nearly as angry as Lukas expects him to be. He’s mad, yeah, and he lectures Lukas a bit on the way home about how fights aren’t the way to solve problems and that he’s disappointed in Lukas (surprise, surprise, what else is new?) for having an argument escalate in the way it did, but it isn’t the anger that Lukas expected from him. 

 

  “He was talking crap about Rose!” 

 

  “I understand, Lukas,” Bo says as calmly as possible. “But that’s no reason to start throwing punches. You’re not grounded, but you will come with me to talk to your principal tomorrow morning, and if this happens again you won’t be off the hook so easy. I’m very disappointed in you Lukas.” 

 

  Lukas turns his face away to look outside the window of his dad’s truck, looking at his bike that’s tied up in the bed, and fighting back the words  _ what else is new _ ? 

 

  “Do you understand me, Lukas?” 

 

  “Yeah Dad. Crystal.” 

 

  It’s a little sarcastic, but maybe his dad is just too worn out to deal with him now, so they spend the rest of the ride home in silence. When they get back, Lukas gets his bike out of the back of the truck, parks it back inside the barn shed then goes to shut himself up in his bedroom. He doesn’t even feel like riding. 

 

  His phone buzzes in his hand a few minutes after Lukas is settled down watching some motocross videos on YouTube, and he checks it to see it’s Chad that sent the message. He’s almost a little disappointed to read Chad’s name instead of Philip’s, but he tells himself he’s ridiculous for thinking that way, and that he just punched Philip in the face and got him in trouble, so he probably wants nothing to do with him now. It’s probably for the best, no, not probably, it  _ is  _ for the best. He needs Philip out of his life so maybe it will stop starting to spin out of control like it has been. 

 

_ What the hell happened with you and the new kid?  _

 

_   He started talking shit about Rose.  _ Lukas is an experienced liar, he knows to keep his story nothing but consistent and always believable. 

 

_ What would he have against Rose? She hasn’t even talked to him.  _

 

_   Fuck if I know. He’s weird, man.  _

 

_   Maybe he’s just mad she’s getting your dick and he isn’t :p _

 

__ Lukas’ face flames at the words in Chad’s text. Chad knows that he and Rose still haven’t had sex yet, so why he would put it like that is beyond him, but he did and now this realization that Philip was closer to having sex with him than Rose has ever been leaves Lukas’ mind spinning. He was more eager to get Philip in bed than he ever has been with Rose or any other girl, and that- that’s petrifying. 

 

_ Sorry dude. Too real?  _

 

__ Lukas blinks back into reality when he reads Chad’s follow up text, and when he looks at the time stamp, he’s aware that he’d been silently freaking out for three minutes and never gave his friend a response. 

 

_ A little  _ is what Lukas types carefully back because, out of context, it was a little too real. It wasn’t for the reasons that Chad expects, but he doesn’t need to know the real reason of why Lukas is getting somewhat hysterical in his own head. 

 

  When his phone vibrates again, it isn’t Chad. 

 

_ You know punching me in the face doesn’t change anything right?  _

 

__ Lukas grits his teeth and tightens his hold on the phone. So Philip’s pissed, but apparently he’s also really stubborn. He doesn’t reply, and sets his phone on the nightstand to roll over and sleep. With the sun out sleeping doesn’t seem like such a dangerous thing, and when he closes his eyes dead bodies don’t burn behind his eyelids, so he sleeps and for a few hours, he forgets all about the murders and Philip’s mouth on his. 

 

*******

 

  The next morning, Lukas still hasn’t replied to Philip’s texts. Throughout the night, he’d seen three more basically just telling him that ignoring him wasn’t going to make the murders and the fact that the guy who saw them got away disappear. Lukas  _ hates  _ him. Or he  _ wants  _ to hate him. 

 

  He wishes that he punched Philip because he didn’t like him, not because he was so scared of people finding out how much he really didn’t  _ not  _ like Philip. Why did everything about him have to be so backwards? 

 

  He’s waiting out in the hallway of the school with his dad when another text comes through. 

 

_ Don’t change your story. I’ll just go along with it so all I have to do is give you some sort of dumb written apology.  _

 

__ Lukas blinks down at his phone, his mind slow with confusion. He wasn’t planning on changing his story in the first place, but to know that Philip is alright with going along with it loosens some of the tightness in his stomach that’s been there since his fist made contact with Philip’s cheek. 

 

  “Mr. Waldenbeck?” 

 

  Lukas looks up at the sound of his last name, his finger pushing the power button of his phone down self-consciously as he does so. He knows that his dad, or the principal, can’t read anything on his phone, especially since the screen brightness is turned all the way down, but the paranoid voice in the back of his mind is always screaming at him that any one misstep could send everything crashing down. 

 

  He and his dad go inside the office and he gets the same lecture he got yesterday by both of them. 

 

  “I don’t know the full story yet, but I have never once had a behavioral problem with Lukas before, Mr. Waldenbeck, so I’m not going to give him a very severe punishment. However, fighting in our high school never goes unpunished, so I will have to give him three days in ISS. Does that sound fair?” 

 

  “More than fair,” his dad gruffly says from beside him, and Lukas keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the corner of Mr. Lewis’ desk. 

 

  “Lukas, I want to make sure that you have told me your whole side of the story yesterday. Is there anything you’re wanting to add?” 

 

  “No,” Lukas says, shaking his head. It’s best to not make a lie more complicated or details can be lost or the story can wind up sounding unbelievable. “Like I said, he came up to me talking crap about my girlfriend and I just didn’t want to hear it anymore so I punched him. That’s it.” 

 

  “Can you tell me exactly what it is that he said?” 

 

  Lukas looks up at Mr. Lewis with slightly narrowed eyes. He hates being asked so many questions. “He called her a slut and other things I’m not going to repeat.” 

 

  “Lukas, I need to know all the details you can possibly give me if you want me to punish Philip accordingly.” 

 

  “I think the black eye I gave him is good enough,” Lukas snaps, because he doesn’t want Philip to get suspended or some shit over something he didn’t even do. It was bad enough that he was probably getting chewed out by Helen and getting ISS because Lukas has an uncontrollable fear of others finding out things about himself he can hardly acknowledge. “Just have him apologize to her or something. I don’t know.” 

 

  “Okay,” Mr. Lewis says calmly. “That’s reasonable. I think I’ll have him do that. Do you want an apology from him as well?” 

 

  Lukas’ stomach rolls at the thought of Philip being forced to apologize to him over something he started in the first place.  _ He  _ should be the one to apologize, but there’s no way he ever will. “No. It’s fine.” 

 

  “Okay. Well, I’ll have a talk to him and his guardian. Have a good day Mr. Waldenbeck, Lukas.” 

 

  Lukas shoots out of the chair and is out of Mr. Lewis’ office before his dad even has the chance to stand. He sees Gabe and Philip sitting in the corner, right next to the office door as he passes, but he pays no mind to them. When he escapes outside, he gets on his bike and rides straight back home and tries to flood out the guilt with the roar of the bike engine and then with blasting music. 

 

*******

 

   A couple hours later, Lukas is lying in bed with his music blasting through his earbuds and waiting for Chad to text him back about letting him stay at his place for the night. As cool as Lukas used to be with staying at home alone when his dad went out in Poughkeepsie, he feels uncomfortable with it now. He knows that realistically the killer has no idea who he is, what he looks like, or where he lives, but that doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want to be at home alone when it gets dark. 

 

  He’s half asleep when he feels movement beside him and somebody reach across him to press a hand to the side of his face. He automatically jerks fully awake and presses his hand roughly against the person’s chest to push them away. But when his eyes focus and the panic inside his body diminishes slightly, he sees just Philip above him with a humorless smirk on his face. 

 

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, already sounding out of breath. 

 

  “Oh?”

 

  “Huh?”

 

  “You’re not gonna hit me again?” Philip asks him, his big brown eyes drifting down over his face until he’s staring at Lukas’ mouth. When he looks back up to Lukas’ eyes, there’s something almost like molten heat in Philip’s own eyes and face. It makes Lukas want to kiss him. 

 

  So, when Philip starts leaning down closer to him, he’s bringing both his hands up to settle on the sides of Philip’s neck and guiding him down. When Philip kisses him, he kisses him with his whole body. He smooths his hands along Lukas’ chest, stomach and sides, and he moves against Lukas with every brush of their lips. 

 

  They’re only kissing for a few seconds when desire unfurls in Lukas’ gut, and he guides Philip’s body from off his knees on the floor, to onto his lap, right before flipping them over so he’s hovering over him, lying between Philip’s spread legs. Then, the desire ebbs away and makes room for the questions he’s been asking himself for the past day. 

 

  “What the hell were you thinking, talking to me in front of everyone?” he asks after pulling away.

 

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Philip breathes, propping himself up onto his left elbow. “The guy. He was barefoot.” 

 

  Lukas can feel his eyebrows furrow and eyes squint in confusion as he tries to think of how the guy being barefoot had anything to do with the fact he was hunting them down. “What?” 

 

  “One of the guys on the murder board, he was barefoot. That means he’s dead.” 

 

  “Yeah,” Lukas gasps, the hand that he still had on Philip’s shoulder starting to caress the skin of the side of his neck and his shoulder blade through the fabric of his jacket and shirt. “O-o-one of the other guys must’ve just lived. I mean… p-passed out, right?” 

 

  “Yeah, but the guy who saw us- he’s dead,” Philip clarifies again, and Lukas feels giddy from the relief he feels. 

 

  “He’s dead,” Lukas quietly repeats to himself. He shouldn’t feel as happy as he does about another person being dead, but he  _ is  _ and he doesn’t have it in him to feel bad for feeling so delighted and thankful. 

 

  “We’re safe,” Philip says, voicing what it was exactly that made Lukas feel so happy. 

 

  “We’re safe,” Lukas repeats, because he can and it’s almost like he has to say it aloud for him to believe it. He leans in closer to Philip, his hand trailing to the back of his neck until the tips of his fingers are tangled in soft, brown hair. 

 

  “Yeah, we’re safe,” Philip says all over again right before their lips are pressed together. They kiss for another minute or two before Lukas sits up to pull his shirt up over his head, and Philip reaches out to start working on the button of Lukas’ jeans. 

 

  Lukas falls down over Philip and presses their foreheads together for a moment, just long enough for them to breathe the same air, then he’s pressing their mouths together again. Philip’s hand flattens against his crotch, and that cold feeling seizes Lukas again and he pulls away. 

 

  “No.” Lukas sits back up again and puts his hands on his thighs, looking down at Philip’s confused, yet slightly exasperated, face. “I can’t believe what’s happening.” 

 

  He says this because he really can’t believe what’s happening. He’s always had a hold on whatever is wrong with him and never let it escalate the way it has with Philip. He’s slipped up a couple times within in his own thoughts, but never has he let himself fall into what he has with Philip. 

 

  Philip looks up at him as though he doesn’t understand how Lukas could possibly say what he just did, and shakes his head as he speaks, “you’re into me, that’s what’s happening.” 

 

_ No shit, that’s the whole problem  _ is what Lukas wants to say back, but he holds his tongue. 

 

  “Just, deal with it,” Philip continues on, and Lukas wrenches himself out of Philip’s hold. 

 

  “No no no,” he insists, “no one knows.” He moves to stand up off the bed, but his earbuds tangle up on his foot, and he has to bend down to untangle them and set them as well as his phone down on his nightstand. The notification light on the top of his phone is flashing, and he knows Chad has responded. 

 

  “What if they do? Who cares?” 

 

  “ _ I  _ care!” Lukas exclaims, not understanding how Philip isn’t seeing the bigger picture here. “You don’t get it. I don’t… I don’t wanna be that guy. And my dad, he doesn’t want me to be that guy. A-and Rose… No one wants me to be that guy.” 

 

  “But what if you are?” 

 

  And that’s the million dollar question isn’t it? Lukas falls silent for a long few seconds, just trying to think of something to say to that. He’s been asking himself that same question for years and still hasn’t come up with a good answer. How is he supposed to answer it for Philip in the next few seconds? 

 

  “You don’t know me,” he settles for saying instead, his lip curled up into a little sneer. He says it as if it’s true, but it’s not. Philip knows him better than anybody else, and Lukas is pretty sure that Philip knows that as well.

 

  “I know that you’re just… some spoiled ass rich kid,” Philip retorts, rearranging himself on the bed so he’s leaning against Lukas’ headboard. Lukas’ chest twinges with hurt at Philip’s statement, even though it is true. He feels irrationally angry at Philip for making him feel the way he does, that he just spits out the first thing that comes to his mind that he knows would wound Philip. 

 

  “Oh, but you know everything because you’re mom’s a junkie?” 

 

  He regrets the words even before they’re all out of his mouth, and the defeated expression that sets over Philip’s face makes his stomach tighten with the same guilt he was feeling earlier that day return. 

 

  “Okay, you didn’t have to say that.” 

 

  Lukas looks out his bedroom window so he doesn’t have to see that expression on Philip’s face any longer. “Sorry. Neither did you.” 

 

  A tense silence falls over them after that, and when Lukas turns away from the window and back towards Philip, the other boy stubbornly looks away and refuses to face him. Lukas runs his fingers through his hair, and tries to bring them back to where they were before he flipped out on Philip like an idiot. 

 

  “My dad’s in Poughkeepsie tonight,” he tells Philip, sounding like a desperate boyfriend that’s trying to convince his girlfriend to come over to have sex, as he crawls back onto the bed. He knows he’s pulling complete 180’s on Philip constantly, and he feels bad for it, and just as confused as Philip probably is, but he can’t help it. There’s this insatiable desire within him that he’s kept stamped down for so long that it’s doing everything in it’s power to be let out finally, even when the internal disgust towards it is still wrestling it tirelessly down. 

 

  Philip still won’t look at him, and Lukas doesn’t blame him, but he wants him so much that he reaches out to cup his face and turn him towards him right before kissing him again. Philip doesn’t fight him, he never does, but he doesn’t respond to him either, and keeps his arms crossed protectively over him. So, Lukas places one hand on Philip’s leg and spreads them again so he can settle in between Philip’s thighs. 

 

  At that, Philip comes to life slightly and places a hand on Lukas’ cheek for half a second before pulling it back down again. Then, Lukas, with his breath coming out in heavy pants, hooks his forearms under Philip’s knees and jerks him down under him again in one fluid motion. He presses down against Philip’s body to grind their hips together, and Philip presses his palms against Lukas’ thighs as quiet sounds break free from his mouth, his eyes going half-lidded. 

 

  Lukas pushes his shirt up until he can see the expanse of Philip’s stomach, and this heat inside his stomach spreads throughout his entire body at the clear sight of him. It had been so dark inside the cabin that night that he could hardly see his hand in front of his face, but now in the natural light of day, Philip is completely exposed to him and he’s gorgeous below Lukas like this. 

 

  “Yeah,” Lukas breathes heavily, then is working at the button of Philip’s skinny jeans to pull them down Philip’s thighs. 

 

  “No, no, nonono,” Philip parrots again and again as he pushes up against Lukas forcefully.    
  
  “What?” Lukas asks in complete confusion, and then Philip is shouting the word with Lukas’ growing confusion. “Shh! Shut up!” 

 

  Philip stands as soon as Lukas has moved off of him, and he starts speaking as he pulls his pants back up and fixes his shirt. “I’m not gonna be you’re little bitch.” 

 

  Lukas’ brows wrinkle and when he asks Philip what he means by that, his voice comes out almost like a laugh. It’s almost humorous to hear Philip say that he isn’t going to be his ‘little bitch’ because that wasn’t what Lukas wanted him to be at all in the first place. 

 

  “You got Rose for that,” Philip continues, “you can’t hit me in the face, not want to be seen with me like I’m some freak. And then you wanna fool around? No, no. No, you gotta decide.” 

 

  The guilt that Lukas was feeling as Philip listed off all the things he’d been doing all to save face evaporates the very second the word ‘decide’ leaves Philip’s mouth, and all that’s left is honest bafflement. What did Philip mean by that? What- there wasn’t anything Lukas could decide! He couldn’t choose between Philip and Rose when he wasn’t even allowed to  _ think  _ about being with Philip. There wasn’t anything he could choose. If he had the option to choose he and Philip wouldn’t be here having this conversation, they’d be out doing the things only he and Rose can do without being looked at with disdain. 

 

  “What’s there to decide?” 

 

  “Alright,” Philip mutters, as though Lukas said what he did to be an asshole. He starts to walk away and Lukas watches him grab some sort of bag off his dresser before rushing out of his room and down the stairs. 

 

  As soon as Philip is off down the stairs, Lukas gets off his bed and walks over to his doorway, fully prepared to go after him. But once he’s looking down the stairs and at Philip’s back, he realizes that there isn’t anything he could possibly say to him. Philip doesn’t understand. Philip is from the city where the choices are endless. Lukas doesn’t have the kind of  _ luxury  _ to just decide who he is. Lukas is who everybody has planned he will be and who everyone thinks he is. He doesn’t get to decide what he likes about people’s plan for him and what he doesn’t like; there is no in between or loophole that he can fall into. It’s just it is what it is. There is no way Philip will ever be able to comprehend that when Lukas himself can hardly begin to accept it as his reality. 

 

  So, instead of chasing after him like he wants to, Lukas turns on his heel and marches back over to his bed to read Chad’s text. He’s going to stay with his friend tonight. 


	7. Scapegoat Murders and Intoxicated Avoidance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas reels with the newfound knowledge that Tommy and Tracy have been found dead with heroin in their system. He knows the killer did it. Guilt overrides him, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut and turns to alcohol instead.

**Part Seven**

**Scapegoat Murders and Intoxicated Avoidance**

**“Because it was us, baby, way before them”**

**Keep on Loving You by Cigarettes After Sex**

 

  After Lukas gets back to his house some time past seven in the morning, his dad is already back, standing at the kitchen counter in front of the coffee maker. Lukas’ step falters when he first walks through the door, which he doesn’t really understand, because it isn’t like he did anything wrong by going over to spend the night at Chad’s. It’s the weekend, he can do pretty much whatever he wants as long as he gets his chores done. 

 

  “Did you go over to Rose’s?” is the first thing his dad asks, before Lukas can even get his boots off. Lukas’ eyebrows furrow, not quite understanding why his dad would jump to that conclusion automatically, but then he remembers he and Rose are dating and most guys his age jump on any opportunity that their parents are going to be gone. 

 

  “Uh, no, Dad. Chad asked me to hang out so I decided to just spend the night.” 

 

  His dad hums, kind of like he doesn’t believe him, and Lukas finds it kind of ironic how his dad doesn’t believe the things he’s honest with him about, but believes everything he lies about. “Okay, well, don’t take off your boots. I need you to put up the signs for the turkey shoot,” his dad says as he turns back around, stirring his honey in his coffee. 

 

  “Oh, okay,” Lukas says, shoving his foot back into the boot that he had taken off. “You want them done just like last year?” 

 

  “Yes.” 

 

  “Alright,” Lukas says, then he leaves the house again and makes his way to the barn shed to get started. They use the same exact signs for the turkey shoot every year, so he started to leave them in the same place in the barn until it was time to get them out. 

 

  When he gets them out and puts them on the little working table out in the barn shed, he works with them for about an hour. He gets about four or five done, and that usually wouldn’t take so long, but he takes long breaks in between each sign to choose a new song and, though he won’t admit it to himself, check if Philip has sent him a text. He’s disappointed each time he checks. 

 

  Even when he does get a text message, it isn’t from Philip. The first time it was Chad, complaining about something his mom made him do, then it was Rose asking if they could go out to town and get something to eat. When he told her that he was busy making the signs, she asked if she could at least come over to give him some company, and was he supposed to deny his girlfriend time with him? So he said yes, like a good boyfriend would do, and she said she would be over in the next hour or so. He wishes it was Philip who was coming over instead, but that was a dumb and risky thing to wish, so he distracted himself with loud music. 

 

  Halfway through the sixth sign, he noticed a leaf blower propped up in the corner, and with the turkeys roaming around him, he impulsively dropped his screwdriver and hammer to go and grab the leaf blower. He turned it on as soon as he had it in his hands, and he turned around to start chasing the turkeys back into their cages with it. 

 

  “Lukas!” he hears over the blasting music in his ears and the loud leaf blower, and he turns his head to see his dad making his way over to him with an exasperated look on his face. “What are you doing? Give me that.” 

 

  Lukas hands the leaf blower over to his dad, and pulls his earbuds out with a light, sheepish chuckle. 

 

  “You don’t think you’re freaking out the birds?” his dad asks, gesturing over to the turkeys that are beginning to venture out of their cages again. 

 

  “Ah,” he laughs again, “they’re okay.” 

 

  “Do you have the signs ready for the turkey shoot?” 

 

  Lukas looks over his shoulder to see his unfinished work, and he grimaces when he realizes he still has about four more to do. “Now why isn’t that done?” 

 

  “I’ll do it now, Dad.” He walks back over to his working station as his dad starts talking again. 

 

  “You know the family’s been doing these shoots on this farm since-” 

 

  “World War One,” Lukas says alongside his dad, already used to this speech by now. His dad goes over the same thing every single year when Lukas is getting the signs ready. 

 

  “Yeah. Why do you always gotta be so different?” 

 

  The words strike a chord within Lukas, and he falls tensely silent, but he still tries to smile at his dad. He knows that he’s probably just talking about Lukas’ love for motocross and his desire to live somewhere outside of the farm. But… but for Lukas it’s so much more than that, and if his dad already thinks he’s too different with just the few quirks he does have, what will he say if he knew about how much Lukas struggles to not be the kind of guy who notices other boys. What would he say if he knew how much he was failing all because of Philip. Lukas doesn’t even want to think about it. 

 

  Suddenly, his phone his buzzing in his jacket pocket, signalling a phone call, and he thinks that it’s Rose so he pulls it out. It’s Philip. He declines the call without a second thought. 

 

  “You got something you’d rather be doing?” his dad asks from beside him. 

 

  “No. No, Sorry Dad.” 

 

  His dad doesn’t say anything more, and just walks away for Lukas to finish up the rest of the signs. He puts his earbuds back in his ears, turns his music all the way up and does his best to ignore the tight knot in his stomach that his dad’s words left him with. He shouldn’t be this panicked over it, his dad is never going to find out about anything that Lukas doesn’t want him to. He has no reason to tell his dad about everything he’s been so adamant on never telling his dad about. Just because Philip makes it a little harder to keep it under control doesn’t mean- it doesn’t  _ mean  _ anything. 

 

  He’s almost done with the last sign when Philip is suddenly on his property, inside the barn shed, flushed and panting as if he ran the entire way to get here. “Hey! Hey!” 

 

  Lukas yanks his earbuds out of his ears and looks frantically around them for any sign of his dad. “What are you doing here? Y-you can’t be here, my dad’s inside!” 

 

  “I just saw the guy from the cabin!” 

 

  “What?! Yo-you said he was dead,” Lukas mutters, not as worried about his dad coming out anymore. 

 

  “No, I thought he was. I just saw him, he looked right at me.” 

 

  Dread fills Lukas’ entire being, and the panic he was feeling over his dad seeing Philip just drains away to make room for this other kind of fear. “He saw you and you came here? Did he- d-did he follow you? What if he knows what I look like? I’m dead.” 

 

  “H-he didn’t follow me,” Philip confirms, and Lukas can tell he’s about to say more, but when they hear the sound of gravel crunching below tires, they both fall quiet. 

 

  “Go go go, in the back,” Lukas says, pushing Philip toward this wall in the back of the barn shed where he can hide. Once Philip is hid enough, Lukas turns to see that it’s Helen getting out of her Jeep. “Shit,” he hisses under his breath, and he grabs one of the metal turkeys before running up to meet her. 

 

  “Hey Lukas,” she greets him kindly. “What are you doing?” 

 

  “I’m getting signs ready f-for the turkey shoot. Hey, my dad’s inside, do you want me to take you to him?” 

 

  “No, that’s okay. I’m here to talk to you,” she says, walking over towards the barn shed. “Were you at his cabin the other day?” 

 

  Lukas’ heart leaps in his chest and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “No I don’t- I don’t jump there anymore.” 

 

  “Oh no, why not?” Helen asks, as if she’s just making conversation. Lukas hates this. He doesn’t know how she knows he was there, or why she’s pretending to not know that he was there with Philip, making out mostly naked, but he just wants her to get to the point so he can stop feeling like he’s drowning. 

 

  “Ah, well, uh. It gets, you know, it gets way too muddy this time of year,” he stammers out, just trying to think of the quickest excuse he can.

 

  “Really, well that’s weird,” she starts to say as she walks closer to his bike and pulls out her phone. “I found some tire tracks in the mud and I thought that they were from  _ your  _ bike.” 

 

  “No,” he helplessly denies, his voice just getting smaller. This is it. It’s all over, everything he’s worked so hard to hide has just been all washed away because of some stupid tire tracks in the mud. 

 

  “No?” she asks as she snaps a picture of the back tire on his bike. “Hmm. Cuz the pattern is identical.” She holds her phone up to him so he can see his bike’s tire pattern in the mud right outside of his dad’s cabin. So she can just rub it in his face that he’s lied for nothing and that his life is about to crumble into pieces all around him. 

  
  


  “I have like a thousand of these things to make and I-”

 

  “Lukas, I think you were at your dad’s cabin and I want to know why you were lying to me about it.”  

 

  “Uh…” 

 

  “Lukas!” 

 

  “Okay,” he breathes, mostly to himself in an attempt to just try and calm himself down. There’s no use lying about it anymore; she already knows and all he’ll end up doing is digging himself into a bigger hole, and wind up dragging Philip down there right with him. “He’s gonna kill me,” he says, his voice strained. 

 

  “Who?” Helen’s voice has gone from angry and frustrated to concerned. 

 

  Lukas breathes in deeply, and he’s about to tell her about the guy that he saw shoot everybody in the cabin, and just accept the fact that nothing is ever going to be the same again, but when he glances in the direction of his house, a new thought pops into his head. “My dad.” 

 

  Helen’s eyes narrow in confusion and suspicion. 

 

  “I-I stole some gas from my dad. He keeps an extra barrel up at the cabin for the chainsaws.” That isn’t a complete lie at all. He really has stolen gas from his dad’s cabin that he keeps up there for the chainsaws, but he doesn’t even remember the last time he did that. Now that his dad gives him a weekly allowance of a hundred bucks, he never worries about not having enough for gas. 

 

  “What time were you there?” 

 

  “Uh, like, ri-right after school.” Again, not a lie, but the murders didn’t happen right after school, so that wouldn’t get him into trouble. 

 

  “So you just got the gas, okay. Did you see anything that I should know about? Anyone suspicious?” 

 

  “No,” Lukas says, with a laugh in his voice as if she’s crazy for even suggesting that. 

 

  “No? You didn’t hear anything when you were riding around up by your dad’s cabin?” 

 

  For a moment, he opens and closes his mouth in search for something to say, and when he sees his helmet hanging off one of the handlebars of his bike, he thinks of something. “I-I can’t hear anything with my helmet on.” 

 

  “Well that must be nice,” Helen mumbles, looking at his bike again, “tuning everything out.” 

 

 “Yeah I guess,” he says quietly, trying to avoid anything that would get her to ask him anymore questions. 

 

  “You should be careful, though,” she says, and he looks up at her with slightly widened eyes. Her saying that makes his stomach squirm, and it just reminds him that Philip saw the killer, and he really  _ does  _ need to be careful now or he could be killed. “I hear you have a big race coming up.” After that, she gives him a smile then walks back out to her Jeep. 

 

  When she’s pulled away, Lukas jabs the screwdriver into the wood of the table with a loud groan, trying his best not to scream. That was way too close. That was- 

 

  “Hey,” Philip says, coming from around the corner of the wall and it jerks Lukas out of his thoughts. He looks up at him, and he knows that he should want absolutely nothing to do with Philip, and he should just push him out and delete his number and never  _ ever  _ talk to him again, but something about seeing him and hearing his voice is comforting. “Maybe he didn’t see us.” 

 

  Lukas knows that isn’t true. The killer had a gun pointed at Philip’s head and was half a second away from pulling the trigger. And when Lukas hit him the first time, the guy had been able to turn and get a good look at him before Lukas was able to hit him a second time. There is absolutely no way that killer didn’t see them. 

 

  So, instead of acknowledging what Philip said in an attempt to make them both feel more at ease, he brings up the thing that he shouldn’t be more worried about than a killer chasing after them, but he is. “Why were you talking to Helen about me? About my race?” 

 

  “I wasn’t,” Philip dismisses, shaking his head, and he has that same wounded expression on his face that he had on the night of the shooting when Lukas screamed that he wasn’t gay like him. Lukas swallows at the sight of it, because as much as he hates seeing it, he can’t stop causing it to return. “Maybe your dad said something.” 

 

  “You should leave before my dad comes back,” he says harsher than he feels, but he needs to sound mean or he’ll just pull Philip back against him and do things he just  _ can’t  _ do, and things that he shouldn’t even  _ want  _ to do. 

 

  But apparently Philip sees something in his face that doesn’t match his tone, because he’s walking closer to him with his lips parted just slightly, and eyes heavy-lidded. “Leave,” Lukas says again, losing some of its forcefulness, and Philip just keeps coming closer until he can feel the tips of their noses brush together. 

 

  With his words failing him, Lukas pushes against Philip’s chest just to get him a couple steps away. “Now!” It works, and Philip gives him a sort of disappointed look while he licks his lips and clenches his jaw, then starts to walk away. 

 

  Lukas turns back around to his working station to try and forget that anything that just happened, happened, but he looks back over his shoulder to call out to Philip. “And Philip, I f- I fixed your flat tire.” 

 

  Philip doesn’t say anything and just keeps walking to where Lukas left his bike propped up against the wall, and rides away, just like Lukas wanted him to do. But, as Lukas is watching him ride off his dad’s property, he can’t help but feel guilty and like he wants nothing more than to Philip to come back. 

 

  Philip is hazardous, and so full of risks that Lukas should want to do nothing but stay away, but he can’t. Never in his life has Lukas felt something like this, and though it’s so full of unpredictability, Lukas doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to drive himself away from Philip. But he doesn’t want to drive Philip away either, even though that seems to be all he does. 

 

*******

 

  It’s only twenty minutes after Philip leaves when Rose shows up. She has a car now so that makes it easier for her to drop by whenever she gets the chance to. Lukas, honestly, sometimes feels a little suffocated by her constant presence, which isn’t something he should feel around his girlfriend, but he does, and he can’t help it. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. 

 

  “Hey, baby,” she greets him, just as warmly as always. He wishes hearing her voice and seeing her gave him that weird feeling in his stomach that Philip’s always does, but it never has and he doubts it ever will. “What’s your dad making you do this time?” 

 

  “Turkey shoot stuff,” Lukas answers, hammering in the last of the nails with a sigh. “I’ve got to go get these signs up now. Hope you don’t mind walking around a little bit.” 

 

  “Not exactly what I had in mind, but sure, I’ll tag along. Let me just get my sunglasses from my car,” Rose says, and she hurries back to her car while Lukas gathers up a few signs. When she gets back to him, she helpfully grabs a sign from him and follows him over to the driveway where people will be able to see them. 

 

  They talk about nothing important on the way over to where Lukas has to put the signs up, but he’s used to the empty conversations with her by now. They never really talk about anything he’s interested about, and even when they do, she rarely engages since she has no idea what motocross is about. At least when Philip pretended to be into it he did more than nod along with whatever it was Lukas was saying. Lukas mentally kicks himself for comparing Rose to Philip; the two shouldn’t even be comparable. Rose is his girlfriend that he’s been with for… two years? Philip is just… he’s a dangerous boy that Lukas can’t stop wanting to kiss, but he’s not like Rose. He can’t be like Rose. 

 

  When Lukas is hammering the post into the ground, his phone starts buzzing in his pocket, but he ignores it. It’s either Chad just complaining about his mom again or sending another meme, or it’s Philip telling him that ignoring him won’t make any of this go away. He can’t deal with any of that right now. 

 

  “Wanna know something?” Rose calls over to him from where she’s sitting on one of the picnic tables, and Lukas flips the hammer over a couple times in his hands as he walks over to her. 

 

  “Uh, I’ve gotta finish this Rose. It’s just… you know my dad.” He sets the hammer down next to her leg and leans in close to her as he begins to mimic his dad, lowering his voice and slipping in an exaggerated country accent.“‘Turkey shoots tomorrow, boy. Better have all these signs up.”’  

 

  “But it’s so tacky!” Rose says, cutting him off and gesturing to the metal turkey’s beside her on the table. Just from that one sentence, Lukas can tell she’s not going to be staying in Tivoli much longer, despite how she says that she’s not planning on leaving her family. Rose hates everything that makes up the country, and Lukas can’t really blame her; he wants to get out just as much as she does. 

 

  “Yeah,” he relents, “but it’s tradition.” 

 

  She gives him a bored expression as she says, “old people standing around shooting birds?”

 

  “Yeah, I mean, they’ve been doing it for a hundred years. They’re not gonna stop now.” 

 

  “Why do you care?” she asks him, her face going from bored to teasing in a matter of seconds. 

 

  “I don’t care,” he rebuffs, even though he kind of does, and he knows Rose can tell by the way she gives him a disbelieving grin. “I don’t care!” he says, smiling back at her as he reaches down to poke her in the stomach a few times. 

 

  “Why do you care?” she repeats, much more playful than the first time and laughing along with him. 

 

  “You don’t even know, you don’t even know! It’s just like, that’s how they’ve been getting people ready to go to war here.” With his explanation, the teasing mood dies down and Rose just hums with a little nod. Lukas kind of misses it. 

 

  With Rose, they rarely have moments where they connect, even as friends, and when it does happen, it’s nice. He wants to be able to be close to the girl he claims that he likes, but something about them just refuses to click. Lukas doesn’t know what it is, but in moments like this, it kind of bothers him. Rose is nice and she’s funny sometimes, so it’s not like it should be nearly impossible to become friends with her the way he wants to. He just doesn’t get it. 

 

  “Yeah,” he says quietly, then turns back around to start working on the signs again, but her hand is catching him by the fingers. “Huh?”

 

  “You remember how I said I wanted us to… wait?” she asks slowly, getting up from the picnic table and slowly backing him up and lacing the fingers of both their hands together. 

 

  Shit. Can’t only one unwanted thing happen today? 

 

  “Yeah I-I-I remember,” he says, doing his best to smile at her, but it feels more like a grimace. But maybe he’s managing it alright, because she doesn’t stop talking or backing him up against the tree or looking up at him in the same way Philip had in the cabin. 

 

  “I don’t think I want to anymore.” 

 

  He gives her a nervous laugh once his back hits the tree, and pulls his hands away from hers. “Wh-why not?” 

 

  She doesn’t answer. Instead, she brings her hand up to cup the side of his face and she kisses him sweet and slow, but he keeps his eyes open through most of it, for reasons he doesn’t really know. It’s even harder to lose himself in her kiss now. After what happened in the cabin and then yesterday in his bedroom, he knows what it’s like to really enjoy kissing somebody, and this, what he is doing with Roe, isn’t it. 

 

  “Well, you know. You’ve… just been so patient with me,” she says when she pulls away from his lips, and her hands start trailing down his stomach until she reaches the hem of his jeans. He reaches down, cupping her hands in his as if he’s going to stop her, but then he remembers that he’s  _ supposed to want this  _ so he pulls them away and places his palms on his thighs. 

 

  “Yeah?” he asks, trying to quell the growing panic inside his chest over the fact that he’s not even hard, very far from it, and he has no idea how he’s supposed to get turned on when he can’t help but find her not sexy or attractive at all in this moment. 

 

  With Philip, even inside his bedroom in the daylight, he’d thought he was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever layed his eyes on. He wanted to touch him  _ everywhere  _ and map out his body beneath his fingertips and learn what kind of sounds he made if he did something with his hands or mouth. Even through the smothering fear that he always feels with his hands and mouth of Philip, he had wanted him so much. Everything felt so  _ right  _ with the one person it’s supposed to feel wrong with, and now, with Rose, it feels  _ wrong _ with the girl it’s supposed to feel right with. 

 

  She giggles as she unbuttons and unzips his jeans, and he tries to laugh along with her, but he can’t achieve much more than a strained sort of wheeze. She sinks down to her knees anyway, biting her lower lip and looking up at him through her long lashes. She’s pretty, she is, even Lukas can acknowledge that right now, and most guys would kill to be in his place, but with her looking up at him like that, all he can think is how much he wants  _ Philip  _ right there. He wants Philip biting his pouty lips, fluttering his eyelashes at him and- 

 

  “And a lot of other guys wouldn’t be that cool,” she says as she begins to tug his jeans down lower. 

 

  “They wouldn’t?” he asks, because he’d thought he’d been doing it right when he said he was fine, more than fine, with waiting until she was ready to do anything. Apparently he hadn’t, but he screwed up a lot with Rose and she’s still with him, so maybe she wasn’t a typical kind of girlfriend. 

 

  “No, they wouldn’t,” she clarifies, and starts giggling again. When his jeans are at his ankles, he bends down to press his mouth to hers to postpone her pulling down his boxers and doing everything else for as long as he can. She melts into it without a fight, and when Lukas feels a demanding buzz from his phone in his pocket, he can’t feel anything but relief. 

 

  “Uh, oh shit,” he curses, as if he’s frustrated by the interruption. He opens up the text before he even realizes it’s from Philip, and Rose sulks down near his feet. 

 

_ The killer saw my jacket… meet right now or I’m telling Helen.  _

 

__ He reads the text a couple times just to be sure that what he’s reading is real, and when it sinks in, all he can focus on is the fact that Philip is probably telling Helen everything they saw right now. He glances down at Rose and wracks his brain for an excuse. 

 

  “Uh, dammit Rose, I-I’m really sorry I-” he stammers, putting his phone back into his pocket and trying to not feel guilty by the embarrassed and hurt expression she’s giving him. “My dad he’s- he’s about to go full metal jacket on my ass,” he explains as he pulls his pants back up and she stands. “I gotta… I gotta get to the range right now and finish this up. I’m sorry, I gotta go.” He grabs her hand and starts leading her back in the direction of the barn shed and where she parked her car. 

 

  After he’s apologized to her for the tenth time on the way back to her car, she finally speaks up with a wobbly smile. “It’s fine- really. I get how your dad is. It’s just a little…” She trails off, but Lukas knows what she wants to say. 

 

  “No, it- don’t feel like that. It’s fine. Just- just some o-other time, okay?” He doesn’t have time to console her over something she shouldn’t feel embarrassed or awkward about anyway, and he sighs heavily when he pretends to feel his phone vibrate in his phone again. “Rose, I really gotta finish this up or it’s not go-gonna be pretty. I’ll text you later.” 

 

  She nods, bites her lip then gets back into her car. Before she’s even driven away, Lukas turns around and pulls his phone out of his pocket to see a new text from Philip. 

 

_ If you don’t reply I’ll tell Helen, I swear.  _

 

_   You said you wouldn’t tell.  _ Lukas types out, heart racing.  _ I’m on my way now. Where do you want to meet?  _

 

_   Behind the station. I’m waiting.  _

 

  Lukas puts his phone back in his pocket, grabs his jacket from where he left it on the work table then gets on his bike. He peels out of the barn shed and out onto the dirt road, not wasting another second of time. He doesn’t know how long Philip will wait before going into the station to tell Helen, and he’s not about to take that chance. 

 

  When he gets to the station, Philip is outside, walking his bike up in the direction of the front of the building. He turns and stops right in front of Philip before he can get any further to the front door of the station. 

 

  “What?” Philip asks, curt and incredibly frustrated. 

 

  “No,” Lukas gasps out as soon as he has his helmet off. “You said you wouldn’t tell Helen.” 

 

  “I wasn’t going to,” Philip says with a careless little shrug, as if Lukas’ entire life is now revolving around whether or not Philip tells anybody anything about what they did or what they saw, “but then I-”

 

  “But what, huh?” Lukas snaps, cutting Philip off as he dismounts his bike. He walks forward with his bike just a little then pops out the kickstand and watches as Philip sets his bike against the wall of the station.

 

  “Did you even read my texts? The guy looked right at me and then he didn’t even follow me when I got off the bus.” 

 

  Lukas walks forward and pushes against Philip’s shoulder to get him to start walking toward a more secluded part of the station, looking around to make sure that nobody could see them. 

 

  “I hit him really hard, he probably can’t even remember what you look like.”

 

  “Maybe. Or maybe he wasn’t after me because he was after Tommy.” 

 

  “What?” Lukas asks, completely thrown off course with that. “He doesn’t even kn-know Tommy.” 

 

  “Tommy borrowed my jacket. The jacket that I was wearing that night. Maybe that’s what he remembers, what if he thinks that Tommy is me?” 

 

  “Are you insane?” Lukas asks, because he saw the killer look straight at Philip’s face with a gun pointed in his direction. There’s no way that he doesn’t remember Philip’s face, but can remember something that he hadn’t even been wearing at the time. 

 

  “If I’m insane then why hasn’t Tommy texted me back all day?”

 

  “Because he doesn’t like you,” Lukas counters. 

 

  Philip just nods at him and rolls his eyes, jaw clenching again with frustration. 

 

  “You’re just overthinking it, alright?” Lukas says, tapping Philip in the chest to get him to look at him again. “We just… we just need to chill.” 

 

  “I just don’t want anything to happen to Tommy because of us, because we didn’t say anything!”

 

  “Nothing’s gonna happen! He’s probably off just hooking up with Tracy somewhere. You said you weren’t gonna tell, you promised-”

 

  “No, no, we should’ve told Helen as soon as this happened!” 

 

  Lukas shouts a couple more “you promised!” at Philip before he’s reaching out and slamming Philip up against the wall behind him. As soon as Philip’s back hits the wall with force, the fight drains out of Lukas and all he can feel is the same helplessness he remembers feeling when his mom died. 

 

  Philip goes silent along with him, maybe because he’s able to see something in Lukas’ face. Lukas stares at Philip for a long few seconds, just wondering what he could possibly say to get Philip to understand why they couldn’t tell anybody about what happened. Then, his hands are sliding up from Philip’s shoulders to the side of his neck so his thumb is cupping Philip’s ear, and he’s leaning in to press the gentlest kiss to his lips. 

 

  He’s bad at words. When he can’t get his words right all Lukas can feel his frustration, and that just leads him to shove Philip around and that gets him absolutely nowhere. He doesn’t want to hurt Philip, and he really doesn’t want to  _ scare  _ him into being quiet, so he just does the one thing he can think of, and that’s to kiss him. 

 

  He kisses Philip because he doesn’t want him to tell, but also to get him to understand that  _ this  _ is why nobody can know about what they saw. What happened in the cabin that night wasn’t just a murder, it was also where Lukas let everything he’s been burying for years come up and the thin ice broke beneath his weight and dragged him below the water’s surface, trapping him under. 

 

  This uncontrollable, intense attraction for Philip is why they can’t tell anyone. 

 

  “Please, Philip. Don’t… don’t tell,” he begs when he pulls away, and his voice sounds defeated, weak, and there are tears that are burning behind his eyes. 

 

  He stares deep into Philip’s own eyes, and he’s met with a sort of resigned acceptance that reassures Lukas deep to his core that Philip isn’t going to tell anyone. He gives a tiny nod even though Lukas already knows his answer, and Lukas lets himself breathe out a quiet sigh of relief before cupping the back of Philip’s head and pressing their lips together again. 

 

  He tangles his fingers through Philip’s hair and presses his body against Philip’s as they kiss. This time, it isn’t slow to communicate Lukas’ powerlessness, it’s as slow as it is deep to help Philip understand how much he wants this, how much he wants  _ him.  _ With every movement of their lips together, Lukas tells Philip that  _ this  _ shouldn’t be what I want, but I  _ do,  _ and with every brush of tongue against Philip’s, Lukas is saying how  _ much  _ he wants him and how much he  _ feels  _ when he’s with him, and how what he feels is almost unbearable but he’s addicted to it, to him.

 

  He pulls away minutes later when Philip is trailing his hands beneath Lukas’ shirt and making tiny sounds against his mouth, arching up against him and pleading for more. He can’t give Philip what he’s asking for now. Not here, not in the back of the station with Helen inside and where anybody can find them. 

 

  “I’ve got a fake ID,” Philip tells him when they’ve been broken apart for a minute or so and have just been giving each other a second to come back to themselves. 

 

  “What?” 

 

  “You said you wanted to chill, right? I could get us some cheap whisky and we can go up to that spot. You know, where that abandoned car and barn is.” 

 

  Lukas smiles at him, and it’s a real one, the kind of smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. “You, Mr. Shea, are brilliant.” 

 

  “I’ve been told,” Philip says with his own smile, and he leans in to press one last kiss to Lukas’ mouth, but it’s chaste, and a moment later he pulls away and is walking out of their secluded spot. “I’ll go pick it up right now. We’ll meet at the edge of town and head up to that spot from there.” 

 

  “Sounds good,” Lukas answers, and Philip is out of his sight a moment later to grab his bike and get them some cheap whisky that will be just enough to wipe their minds clean for a couple hours. 

 

*******

 

  It’s about ten minutes later when Lukas sees Philip ride up to him right at the edge of town. He’s got a brown paper bag balanced between him and the handlebars, and Lukas grins at the sight of the alcohol. 

 

  “I almost got caught,” Philip says to him when he rides up next to him. “The guy… at the store, he recognized me as Helen’s foster son. Being in a small town sucks.” 

 

  “Welcome to my hell,” Lukas says, half-jokingly, as Philip gets off his bike to get on the back of Lukas’. “I can never go into the liquor store and buy anything.” 

 

  “Well, now I can’t either if that makes you feel any better.” 

 

  “Not really. Now I can’t have you go in there and get some for us anymore,” Lukas says, but before Philip can reply, he revs his bike and he speeds off in the direction of the spot Philip had been referring to earlier. 

 

  That spot is actually part of his dad’s farm, but after the old barn burned down from lightning or some shit, his dad never goes out there for anything anymore. For a long time Lukas had completely forgotten about it, but when he had been trying to think of places for him and Philip to hang out, it jumped to his mind and now this was one of their favorite places to relax. 

 

  When they get to the spot, Lukas parks his bike a little ways down the hill where an abandoned car and the seat from inside it sit on. He and Philip trek up the hill to sit down on the old car seat, then crack open the alcohol bottle and Lukas is the first to take a swig of it. 

 

  When it goes down his throat, it burns so much his eyes water and he coughs as he passes it back to Philip. “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said cheap whisky,” he teases through his coughing. 

 

  “I had ten dollars on me. What did you expect? Some expensive aged shit?” Philip laughs then takes a swig of the whisky himself, coughing as well when he pulls back, but not nearly as bad as Lukas had. 

 

  “I have  _ taste,  _ Philip. I expect only the best.” 

 

  Philip snorts as he passes the large bottle to Lukas and pushes his hair out of his face, smiling up at him. “Excuse me for not knowing you were a classy man. Do you use words like ‘slacks’ and ‘knickers’ and ‘smashing’?” 

 

  “That’s an insult to the British,  _ Philip _ ,” Lukas fake gasps after taking another drink, and Philip tosses his head back and laughs so brightly that Lukas would have been crazy to not lean in and kiss him. 

 

  When he pulls back, Philip doesn’t look surprised by the fact he’d been kissed out of the blue by Lukas again, and Lukas doesn’t feel surprised that he’s done it. Lukas isn’t sure if it’s a good thing that he hasn’t shocked himself by kissing Philip once again, but before he allows himself to dwell too much on it, he takes another gulp of alcohol and lets the burn take his worries away. 

 

  Through the course of the next thirty minutes or so, he and Philip drink a little more than half the bottle while they’re lounging on the ratty seats. In those thirty minutes, they talk about nothing but laugh at everything and share lazy, tipsy kisses in between that the alcohol just makes taste all the more addicting. 

 

  “Oh, look,” Lukas says against Philip’s lips, having spotted a baseball bat lying somewhere over Philip’s shoulder when he’d opened his eyes in the middle of their kiss for some unknown reason. “Lemme show ya somethin’,” he slurs, then picks himself up off the couch despite Philip’s noise of protest, and grabs the bat up from the ground.

 

  He walks back over to where the car and the couch are, then swings the bat at one of the back windows of the car and watches satisfyingly as the glass shatters from the blunt force of the swing. “You wanna try it?” 

 

  “You have the weirdest… ideas,” Philip says after taking another drink, but he stands up off the seats anyway, then shakes his head at Lukas’ question. “Keep going. You’re the twelve-year-old here.” 

 

  “ _ I’m  _ having fun,” he says, but brings the bat down on the car again and smashes up the last window that’s closest to him. When he’s done beating up the already ruined body of the car, he kicks it one last time for good measure and looks up at Philip who’s taking another swig of whisky. “You’re turn.” 

 

  Philip relents, stumbles forward with the drink held forward so Lukas will trade with him. “Yeah, take a swing,” Lukas says brightly as he takes the drink from Philip and gives him the bat. “Let’s see what you got.” 

 

  “Batter up!” Philip exclaims, then swings at the car, but isn’t even able to make a dent in the weak metal. 

 

  Lukas snorts, “yeah, you swing like a girl.” 

 

  “Shh, nah. I’m chilled out,” Philip argues, and takes the drink back from Lukas. 

 

  Lukas walks forward for a rock that he sees on the ground and tosses it up in the air, then swings the bat forward in an attempt to hit it. He misses, and slams against the old car instead. 

 

  Philip laughs, his voice high and Lukas can’t help but think he sounds cute. “What was that?” 

 

  “No, wait, hold on,” Lukas says, grabbing the same rock off the ground and tosses it back up into the air while Philip calls out “batter up” again. This time, the rock meets wood and goes flying out until Lukas can’t see it anymore. 

 

  He calls out joyfully and Philip makes some sort of exclamation while he puts a hand over his eyes to block the sun as he looks for where the rock lands. “Oh yeah,” Lukas says confidently, pointing out towards the horizon with his bat. 

 

  “Okay, I’m kinda impressed.” 

 

  “And that’s gone!” 

 

  “Pretty impressed.” 

 

  “That’s gone…” 

 

  Philip makes his way back over to where Lukas is standing and leans up against the side of the car. “So where’s your girlfriend?” he asks as he passes the whiskey over to Lukas. 

 

  “I don’t know,” Lukas says uncaringly against the mouth of the bottle, not even worried about wiping it off at this point, because he really doesn’t know or care where Rose is at the moment. He’s out here with Philip now, and all he wants to do is spend time with him. Then, a sudden thought strikes him and he pulls the drink away from his lips to say, “but, uh, she wants to blow me.” He looks over at Philip as he speaks, raising his eyebrows and smiling cockily at him. “You jealous?” 

 

  “You want me to be,” is all Philip says in response to him as he takes the whisky back, and Lukas knows he’s been caught. There’s really nothing for Philip to be jealous over anyway. He knows that Lukas thinks Philip is a far better kisser than her anyway, and he’s positive that Philip knows way more about him than Lukas is ready to even admit yet. 

 

  He laughs, because he’s still giddy with all the alcohol in his system. “Screw you.” He takes the bottle back from Philip. “You know, if that killer finds me,” he starts, then hands the bottle right back to Philip as he straightens up again, grabs the bat, then keeps talking. “This time, I’m gonna bash his skull in,” he proclaims, smashing the bat up against the hood of the car. He thought he did it once, he could do it again for real. 

 

  “Yeah, okay, tough guy,” Philip says disbelievingly, “too bad he’s not looking for us.” 

 

  “Oh yeah, look out Tommy. He’s coming for you,” Lukas says, and as soon as Philip turns to look at him with that same weird expression on his face, he knows that he said something stupid again. “What? He’s… I’m just kidding,” he assures, his voice going soft, “it was a joke… I was just-” 

 

  He takes the bottle out of Philip’s hand, takes a long drink of it, then sets it back on the hood of the car. He grabs Philip’s shoulders once he has it set down, and smiles at him, trying to get him back into the mood he was in just a minute ago. He doesn’t want these murders to ruin the friendship that they had. “I was kidding! It was a joke, c’mon! He’s alright, he’s gonna be fine,” he insists as he pushes his body up against Philip’s and tugs him down onto the car seat, falling down on top of him. 

 

  He chuckles, and as soon as they’re lying down, he tickles Philip just enough to get the other boy laughing and smiling again. “It was a joke! It-” He’s cut off by the sound of a police siren, and he picks himself up off of Philip to look over the hood of the car in front of them. “Wait. Aw, shit!”

 

  “What what what?” Philip hisses, and he’s pushing himself up onto his elbows as well. 

 

  Lukas jumps off of him before the policeman can get out of his Jeep and see him hovered over Philip like this. “Shit, it’s Tony,” Lukas swears once he sees the man get out of his Jeep and gestures for Lukas to go down and meet him. Lukas knows that he won’t get in too much trouble for getting caught drinking, his dad excuses weird things like that, but the problem is, is that he’s with Philip. 

 

  “Just stay here,” Lukas hisses back at him, but before the words are out of his mouth, Philip sits up completely and there’s no way that Tony doesn’t see his head poking up. He can tell the very second Tony sees Philip and recognizes him, because he looks oddly disappointed in him, and Lukas wants to put his head in his hands and groan. 

 

  “I can’t stay here. Tony knows it’s me,” Philip argues, then gets up onto his feet shakily and starts making his way down to where Tony is waiting. Lukas follows after him reluctantly, but he knows that running away or just staying put won’t make the outcome of this any better. 

 

  “H-how did you know we were all the way out here?” Philip asks Tony when he gets down to him, and Lukas is wondering the same thing, but he isn’t about to ask. 

 

  “Well, the guy from the liquor store called about thinking that you went in there to buy some whisky. And then I saw your bike all the way out on the edge of town, then some people from down a little ways called over some noise disturbances over here. I’m assuming that the noise was from you.” 

 

  “Man, my dad is gonna kill me,” Lukas groans as Tony ushers them into the back of his Jeep. 

 

  “Should have thought of that before you went off drinking with Philip,” Tony says, completely unsympathetic, and Lukas lies his head on the back of the headrest and Tony drives them back to the station. 

 

  He locks them inside once they get in there, and says that Helen, Gabe and Bo will be there in just a few minutes. Lukas, completely done with today, just gets down on the floor and lies down on his back. He and Philip sit there in silence for just a few minutes, the giddiness of their drunkenness starting to make room for the sick part. 

 

  “Why’d- why did you kiss me earlier?” Philip asks suddenly, and Lukas pinches his eyebrows in confusion. He thought that the message was clear enough when he kissed Philip, but apparently it wasn’t. 

 

  “What?” 

 

  “Cuz you wanted to or because you didn’t want me to tell?” 

 

_ Both  _ is what Lukas thinks, but he says, “I’m not supposed to like you this way,” which, he guesses, answers Philip’s question just fine. 

 

  “No, we gotta talk right now!” 

 

  “Bo, calm down, I understand-” 

 

  Lukas jerks at the sound of his dad’s angered voice, and he sits up so fast his head spins. “Oh. Oh, shit,” he mumbles, then stumbles over the one of the file cabinets in the office that he saw hand sanitizer on. 

 

  “What do you want me to say?” Philip asks from the chair he’s sitting on. “I’ll say whatever you want.” 

 

  “We can’t talk, right? If we’re even more wasted,” he ponders aloud, untwisting the cap on the sanitizer and looking insider at it. Then, the puts it to his mouth and takes a few large gulps of it, fighting the urge to vomit as soon as it touches his tongue. 

 

  “Is that hand sanitizer? No, no, don’t do that-” Philip urges from the other side of the room, as if he’s had to have this talk with another person before, and maybe he has, but Lukas doesn’t care as he hurries over to him and orders him to drink some of it as well. 

 

  “No nonono,” Philip mumbles, but Lukas continues to tell him to do so, and eventually Philip finally brings it to his lips and takes a sip of it. He gags as soon as he tastes it and shoves it back into Lukas’ hand, and he hurries to put the cap back on and hide it over in the corner. 

 

  “Okay, so who has the fake ID?” Helen asks when she first walks into the station, but Lukas nor Philip make any move to answer her. 

 

  “So, what, you two are friends now?” his dad asks angrily from beside the door, and Lukas cringes at the tone of his voice. He never wanted this to happen. He never wanted anyone to know he and Philip hang out because that would just cause too many problems, and he especially never wanted anyone to find out like this. 

 

  “No,” Lukas lies quickly, and bluntly as he does his best to fight the oncoming nausea. 

 

  “No? You just happen to get drunk and smash windows together?” Helen chimes in.

 

  “Okay, look, I don’t get it,” Bo continues on, “what the hell is going on with you two?” 

 

  With the large amount of alcohol Lukas just took in and the raising anxiety from the sudden onslaught of questions, Lukas can’t fight the nausea any longer and he lurches forward and throws up before much of anybody can do anything to stop it. Helen hands him a napkin from somewhere, and pats his back somewhat comfortingly. 

 

  “You know what, why don’t we just- you can come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about it then?” 

 

  “Yeah, we’ll talk about that first thing tomorrow,” his dad says as he comes forward, pushes the trash can out of Lukas’ way and leads him along outside.  

 

  The drive back home seems entirely too long, and it’s filled with nothing but tense silence. Lukas expected his dad to yell at him, or at least lecture him, on the way home, but nothing was said at all. Even when they got home and Lukas puked for a second time outside in the lawn, his dad did nothing but sort of pat him on the back as he passed to go inside the house. That was it. 

 

  For the remainder of the afternoon and evening, Lukas spent the entire time in his bedroom, trying to nurse his hangover best he could. His dad even brought up an Advil and a bottle of water, saying that he had to drink it or he’d risk getting too dehydrated and have to go to the hospital. For the entire rest of the night, his dad didn’t come up and ask him what he had been thinking, what he was doing with Philip, or give him a lecture of any kind. 

 

  The next morning, when Lukas wakes up, he is greeted with a handful of text messages from a ton of people, but he doesn’t open them. He’s pretty sure that somebody saw him and Philip being escorted, drunk off their asses, into the police station and started up a rumor right then and there. He didn’t want to deal with any of that right now, not when he had a pounding headache and he still had to deal with whatever lecture his dad was waiting to give him this morning. He’ll have to hear people talk about it at school today enough. 

 

  But when he gets dressed and goes downstairs, his dad is already outside working. Maybe he just isn’t going to bring up what happened yesterday at all. It wouldn’t be unusual for his dad to not talk about things like that, and for once, Lukas is grateful for his dad’s lack of interest in what goes on with him in his social groups or anything he could be going through emotionally. He just isn’t sure how he’d be able to answer any questions about Philip. 

 

  He’s getting his boots on when his phone vibrates insistently in his pocket, and he fishes it out with an annoyed grumble. It’s Chad, not Philip even though that’s who he thought it would be, because he usually sends him a new link to a video for his motocross channel that he’d been working on. 

 

_ Dude, school’s cancelled today. I can’t believe what happened to Tommy and Tracy…  _

 

  Lukas’ heart skips in his chest, and he types out an answer to Chad. There’s no way… it’s impossible. Philip had just been overthinking everything yesterday. Nothing happened to Tommy and Tracy. 

 

_ What happened? What are you talking about?  _

 

_ It’s all over Facebook and Twitter. Have you not checked? They both overdosed last night. They’re dead.  _

 

  “Oh God,” Lukas croaks, his knees buckling so fast under him that he had to grip onto one of the chairs at the dining table to keep himself upright. Chad says that they overdosed, but- but there is no way. Tommy was getting into Notre Dame with his football and that’s all he ever talked about, and Tracy was already applying for nursing schools last he heard; they’d both been planning to move out into the city, get an apartment and settle down together. That was all Tommy and Tracy ever talked about, they would have never thrown all of that away for drugs. 

 

  Lukas knows, he  _ knows  _ that the killer got to them. He must have really just recognized Philip’s jacket, saw it on Tommy, saw him with Tracy and automatically thought that was who was in the cabin with him that night. He killed them. He  _ killed them  _ and it was all Lukas’ fault. 

 

  He pressed a hand to his mouth and backed out of his conversation with Chad to click on Philip’s name instead. He stared down at the screen, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard, but having no idea what to say. Philip knows that it’s his fault to, and he’s probably telling Helen right now about what they saw because now two people are  _ dead  _ because of them,  _ dead in their place.  _

 

  He types out three different texts to Philip, but in the end he can’t think of anything to say, so he just shuts off his phone and puts it in his pocket. He doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to think about it. He goes outside to find his dad because he would rather hear a lecture about not drinking and to not hang out with Philip anymore than to talk about Tommy and Tracy. 

 

  When he gets outside and finds his dad, one of the neighbors, Arnold is outside helping his dad move all the turkeys. He heads over to them and his dad has him follow Arnold around in the tractor until he has the cage in the correct spot outside in the range. He places a large rock behind one of the tires to keep it in place, and his dad instructs him to go help with the hitch. 

 

  “Now Son, I know you weren’t that close to, uh, Tommy and his girlfriend, but if anybody pressures you about drugs…” 

 

  “No way,” Lukas says, and he hopes that his dad will end the conversation at that because he just- he doesn’t want to hear anything about them or he’ll break down right here in the middle of the field and everything will come spilling out. 

 

  “All right. Whatever you need, you can talk to me, right?” 

 

  Lukas pauses in answering because he isn’t so sure he can talk to his dad about just anything. If he was able to, then maybe he and Philip wouldn’t have to be sneaking around now, and he would never have seen what he did in the cabin. 

 

  “Okay Dad.” 

 

  “Alright. I’m going to get some water and food for these birds.” 

 

  Before his dad can get much farther, Lukas calls out to him because he can’t stand not knowing if he’s going to lecture him about drinking anymore. “H-hey, Dad. Sorry about yesterday,” he says, nervously tugging at the wire of the turkeys cage.

 

  “Yeah, I just, uh. I can understand drinking, we all got into that in high school, but smashing windows with some city kid? You’re supposed to be better than that.” 

 

  His dad leaves it at just that, but hearing just that last bit is enough to make Lukas feel as if he was just given a two hour lecture. He knows that he’s supposed to be better than that, but in the moment, when he was swaying on his feet and giddy from the alcohol and Philip’s laugh, he felt as if nothing wrong with the world. He doesn’t want to regret feeling as carefree as that, but his dad always manages to somehow make him feel like he’s done wrong by having some fun. 

 

  “You’ve got free time with the turkey shoot going on, so if you want you can go grab your bike,” his dad says from where he’s at the picnic table, getting some food for the birds. “It’s still over there from yesterday.” 

 

  “Okay. Thanks, Dad,” Lukas says, and he leaves the range before his dad can change his mind and ask him to do anything else. 

 

  It takes him about fifteen minutes to walk over to the spot he and Philip were at yesterday, and while he’s walking, he dumbly texts Philip. 

 

_ At the spot we were at yesterday.  _

 

_   On my way.  _

 

__ Lukas is sitting on his bike, staring at the ground and listening to the engine in an attempt to drown out the guilt that’s plaguing him. It doesn’t work, and all he can think of is Tommy and Tracy’s bodies draped over one another with planted heroin running through their veins to cover up evidence of murder. A murder that was all his fault. 

 

  “Lukas!” Philip shouts from somewhere behind him, and Lukas doesn’t want to hear anything Philip has to say even though  _ he  _ was the one who asked Philip to meet him here, so he revs his bike engine to block him out. “Hey!” 

 

“No!” Lukas shouts back at him, shaking his head. He knows what Philip is going to say and he  _ doesn't want to hear it.  _

 

“Tommy and Tracy- Hey!” 

 

  “What?” Lukas asks, his voice sharp when he whirls around to face Philip, knowing that revving his engine won’t help him avoid anything for much longer at all. 

 

  “I showed Helen the pictures of Tommy and Tracy and she still thinks they overdosed. You know he killed them, what if he’s still out there?” 

 

  “No!” Lukas spits out through gritted teeth, because anything is better than admitting to himself that the killer is still out there, looking for them and killing people in their place. He walks over to the abandoned car that they had just smashed up yesterday and kicks its front bumper as he keeps shouting no, getting his frustration out on something else but Philip who doesn’t deserve it. 

 

  “Stop, stop!” Philip yells as he tries to pull Lukas away from the car, but he just keeps yelling no to block out everything else. “Stop. Stop!” 

 

  When Philip has successfully pulled him away from the car, Lukas turns to him and snarls. “It’s never gonna stop is it, Philip? All this killing, it’s never gonna stop.” He pauses, and all the anger and denial in his body drains away to guilt and defeat as he looks down at his feet. “And it’s my fault.” 

 

  “What are you talking about?” Philip asks, his voice soft and expression pitying. 

 

  “Tommy and Tracy. The turkeys. They’re just gonna shoot them, for nothing. And it’s my fault.” 

 

  Philip shakes his head and reaches down to pick up their deserted helmets from the dirt. “It doesn’t have to be,” he says as he pushes Lukas’ helmet against his chest. “C’mon, let’s go.” When Lukas doesn’t move and just stares down at his helmet, Philip urges him again with another “c’mon!”. 

 

  So, Lukas puts on his helmet and follows Philip over to the bike. Once they’re both on and situated, he starts speeding off in the direction of his house, where he last left the turkeys with his dad and Arnold. 

 

  As soon as they get there, he parks his bike a little ways away from the cage and hurries over towards it with Philip at his heels. He stops at the cage, clutching the chicken wire when he does, and stares distressfully into the empty cage. Before he or Philip can say anything to each other, they both hear a gunshot ring out in the distance, causing them both to jerk and turn in that direction. 

 

  Lukas knows what the gunshots mean, and he looks back down at the empty cage, his eyes burning and throat tight, as he tries his best to not let this guilt and fear eat him alive. It doesn’t work. 

 

  “Lukas-” 

 

  “Don’t,” Lukas chokes, shaking his head and gripping at the chicken wire until he feels it cut into his palm. He knows that Philip is going to say that he tried and there was nothing he could possibly have done, and he can’t hear that. He can’t hear it when there was something he could have done, both for Tommy and Tracy and the turkeys. 

 

  He knows he should march straight up to Helen and tell her everything that he and Philip saw in the cabin, but his feet stay rooted to the ground as the terror of being found out outweighs the horror of being found by a killer. 

 

  “Just take me to the house. No one is there and your dad will probably be coming back soon.” The last part is said bitterly, but Philip’s dejection over Lukas not wanting anybody to know they’re even friends is not the greatest of Lukas’ worries. He nods, pulls himself away from the turkey cage because there’s no use standing there in hopes to save some dead birds, and takes Philip home.  


	8. Beginnings of Breakdowns and City Sights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas begins to feel the crumbling weight of the murders breaking him down, but before they can completely bring him to his knees in defeat, Philip takes him to the place that makes Lukas feel more free than he ever has before.

**Part Eight**

**Beginning of Breakdowns and City Sights**

**“Yeah, if you wanna find love then you know where the city is”**

**The City by The 1975**

   “Fuck, Lukas-  _ fuck,”  _ Philip pants against Lukas’ mouth, his back arching up off the mattress as his hips rock back against Lukas’. They don’t have anything except underwear between them, and the thin material does little to buffer the friction between them, but Lukas still wants anything between them gone. 

   Philip’s nails scratch down his back and his legs wrap around Lukas’ calves as they move against each other, and Lukas hisses between his teeth at the dull pain he feels, but he doesn’t complain. He trails his lips down Philip’s sharp jawline down to his neck where he sucks and bites marks into his skin. Philip cries out, his voice already breaking as he tilts his head to the side and slid one of his hands down the expanse of Lukas’ back until he could slip it inside his underwear.

   “ _ Off-  _ c’mon, Lukas,” Philip urges through breathless gasps, and Lukas pulls away before he can do something embarrassing like come in his underwear like a thirteen year old just from a little grinding. He pulls off his underwear like Philip wanted and kicks them to the floor, but before Philip can reach down to take his own off, he places his hands on Philip’s hips to keep them pressed against the bed and starts to kiss down his chest.

   “Lukas,” Philip moans again when he licks over one of his nipples, and Philip’s fingers bury themselves inside his hair the lower Lukas kisses. Philip exhales his name again when Lukas mouths hotly over his hip bones, nipping at them gently and just barely sticking the tips of his fingers inside Philip’s boxers, brushing over sensitive skin that leaves Philip’s hips twitching.

   “ _ Please _ ,” Philip grits out, picking his head up from the pillow, and Lukas chuckles lowly as he looks up to meet the other boy’s eyes. The black of his pupils have nearly swallowed the brown of his eyes, his lips are red and shiny from being bitten and kissed, and there’s a flush high on his cheeks. The sight of Philip so debauched without hardly having touched him has Lukas’ cock twitching against his thigh, and his fingers adventuring lower inside Philip’s boxers until he’s brushing against the base of his dick.

   “Please what?” Lukas asks, even though he knows exactly what it is that Philip is begging for. Philip makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, and his hips jerk forward again, his eyebrows drawing together.

   “Fucking touch me already,” he demands, and Lukas has never been able to say no to Philip before, so he smirks up at him before pulling his boxers down to his mid-thighs, just enough so he can wrap his fingers around him.

   “Like that?” he murmurs, his thumb sweeping through precum that’s already leaking from the head of Philip’s cock, and Philip drops his head against the pillow again with a low moan.

   “ _ Yes _ ,” he hisses, thrusting into Lukas’ fist once Lukas tightens his grip around him just slightly and begins to move with purpose. When Lukas twists his hand and swipes his thumb across the tip again, Philip’s whole body shudders and he groans Lukas’ name loudly, his eyelids fluttering. “Fuck, that’s good,” he sighs, but then he’s reaching down to grip at Lukas’ forearms to pull him back up. “I wanna- do it together.”

   Lukas knows what he means, and he nods with a quiet sound as he pushes their mouths back together. He kisses him messily, with mostly tongues and teeth than anything else, but Philip doesn’t seem to mind in the least, and meets him with just as much hunger. Impatiently, Philip ruts against Lukas again, and Lukas laughs even as he lines their cocks together, wraps his hand around them and starts to move.

   “Oh God,” Lukas whines out this time, pulling out of the kiss when it begins to be too much effort to pant and gasp and moan against Philip’s shoulder and crook of his neck instead. Philip arches up against him until every part of their bodies are touching, and his hands are everywhere on Lukas’ body as they move together.

   “Lukas,” Philip groans, and Lukas loves the way his name is sighed so heatedly from Philip’s mouth, and how he’s the only one of Philip’s mind while they do this. “I’m already- ‘m coming,” he chokes, then his body seizes and convulses underneath Lukas’ touch as he coats his stomach and Lukas’ fingers with hot stickiness.

   Lukas strokes Philip through his orgasm, and when Philip finally stops shaking, he pulls his hand away to look down at him. He opens his mouth to say something cheeky or teasing or maybe desperate, but the words dry on his tongue as soon as he’s met with the scene below him.

   Philip’s eyes are still on him, but instead of heated desire or even sated happiness, they’re empty and glass-like. Lukas chokes on his spit and picks himself up until he’s sitting on Philip’s thighs, and Philip’s stomach is coated with blood instead of cum and there’s a gaping wound in his abdomen.

   “ _ Oh, God,”  _ Lukas gasps, going dizzy from the whiplash of arousal to absolute horror, and he leans over to vomit all over the cabin floor. “Philip,” he sobs out when he’s finally done retching, and he avoids his stomach to cup Philip’s face in his hands. He’s already cold- so, so cold, and Lukas’ hand is stained red with his blood. “Philip,  _ please!” _

   “You killed him,” a man's voice sounds lowly, staring down at Philip’s bloodied form. Lukas can’t tear his eyes away from Philip’s face, and he can't get over how empty Philip's usual bright eyes are.  And the blood- God the blood is everywhere. He jerks when the man suddenly turns around to look straight at him, but his hair is covering his face so much that Lukas can’t make out anything. The gun is still in his hand, pointed straight at Lukas with his finger already on the trigger. 

_    That’s dangerous  _ is the first thing that pops into Lukas’ head as he stares down the barrel of the gun, but the second thing is  _ he’s going to shoot me. _

   Before he can think to do anything, still frozen by grief and terror, he hears the echo of a gunshot and sharp, unyielding pain in his stomach. He looks down to see blood flowing from his body, and he collapses onto Philip's stiff, cold body with a silent scream. He looks up to the shirtless man, who’s still hiding his face from him, with tearful eyes and blood trickling from his mouth.

   “Say hi to Tommy and Tracy for me,” the man says, then the gun is fired again and everything goes dark.

   Then, suddenly it’s bright again as Lukas shoots up in his bed, the early morning sunlight streaming through his curtains and his alarm clock blasting in his ear. His mind is reeling from residue arousal and his heart is skipping in his chest from fear. His stomach squirms with guilt when he remembers the first parts of his dream when he had Philip’s imagined body under his and their aching cocks pressed together and the guilt grows when he feels his dick half-hard in his boxers despite the horrific ending of his nightmare. 

  Lukas rubs a hand over his face, ignoring his aching dick in his boxers because there's no way he could jerk off without imaging Philip's blood on his hand instead of cum. He slams his hand down on the 'off' buttons on his alarm before it can go off in the next five minutes and shakes away the remnants of the dream before kicking his covers off of him. 

   It’s already Wednesday, a few days after Tommy’s and Tracy’s bodies had been discovered, and Lukas has had nightmares like this ever since he found out about it. They don’t always start or end in the same way, but Philip is always there being killed first, then the man turns right around to shoot Lukas. Sometimes he mentions something about Tommy and Tracy, sometimes he doesn’t. Lukas prefers when he doesn’t. 

   He grabs his phone from the nightstand and looks at the texts people sent him through the night. There are a couple from Chad that aren’t anything important, one from Rose asking him to pick her up an hour or so before school so they can hang out (which he replies yes to, of course), and one from Philip. He almost ignores the one from Philip when the phantom voice of him moaning his name replays in his mind, but he looks at it anyway. 

_    Morning  _ is all the text says, and even though it’s so simple, Lukas’ stomach tightens with something that isn’t from guilt or self-disgust or anything of the sort. He kind of, in a way, likes the feeling. He’s never felt this way from any of Rose’s more sappy texts or things she’s said directly to him. 

   The feeling is almost enough to scare him away from replying, but he taps the text box anyway and types a quick reply. 

_    Hey. Gabe is taking you to the lake this morning, right?  _

   Philip had mentioned something about it in passing to him the other day when they were hanging out inside the tunnel, so Lukas is a little surprised he remembers, but he thought it would be a fairly good conversation starter. 

_    Yea. Helen is being kind of weird about it this morning. She’s all happy and acting like this is the best thing to ever happen.  _

_    That’s good tho right? You said she hasn’t ever been as welcoming as Gabe has.  _

_    I guess, but still. It’s weird.  _

_    I get it. If my dad started talking about feelings and shit I’d be really freaked out. _

   Philip sends a laughing emoji at that, and Lukas smiles down at his screen. He waits for a couple minutes for a reply, but when he doesn’t get one he figures that Gabe and him are heading out, so he decides to go ahead and get dressed to go pick up Rose. 

   His nightmare is forgotten. 

*******

   When he picks Rose up from her house, she doesn’t suggest they go to the only bakery in Tivoli, that also used to be a church, to get donuts like they usually do. Instead, she suggests they go to the lookout spot that they accidentally stumbled across one day when she tagged along with Lukas on a ride.

   He thinks it’s a bit of a weird request, and he asks her why she’s suddenly so interested in going, but she just shrugs and gives him a sort of half smile while she gives him a vague answer of just thinking it was a good idea. He doesn’t ask her anything more, figuring she just doesn’t want to tell him right now, and drives towards the lookout spot.

   Halfway there, his bike makes a strange rumbling sound and he decides he’ll have a look at it as soon as they get there. When he parks, she gets off his bike to set their backpacks on the picnic table on the site and he kneels down to look at whatever is wrong with his bike. 

   After a couple minutes of him just trying different things to fix the sound, she walks up behind him then kneels down until her front is pressing up against his back and is rubbing at his shoulders. He doesn’t really mind her touch, at least not as much as he used to when they first started dating, but he knows that he still doesn’t like it. Now that he’s been touched by somebody that he enjoys being touched by, he can tell that he kind of flinches away from her intimate touch, like when she presses up against him like this. 

   “Yep, this is definitely it,” she says next to his ear, and he keeps messing around with the parts of his bike, not really caring too much about what it is that she’s talking about. 

   “What’s it?” he asks, because it’s one of those half filled statements that require prodding to get the full answer to. He hates it when Rose does this.

   “Where we’re gonna do it.” 

   Revulsion fills Lukas’ body at the mention of it, and he’s suddenly reminded of how she tried to go down on him that one day when he was putting the turkey signs up. 

   “Tommy and Tracy are dead and all you can think about is hooking up?” he says instead of saying that he really doesn’t ever want to have sex with her. Tommy and Tracy are easier to fall back on, and he feels a little guilty for using their death, their  _ murder,  _ as an excuse to not sleep with the one person he should want to sleep with, but it’s easier than admitting the truth. 

   He stands up to get away from her, and he hears her make a sort of sad sound behind him, but he can’t bring himself to care. He wonders for a split second if not caring makes him a bad person, and it probably does, but he doesn’t have a lot of time to dwell on that before she’s speaking again. 

   “I think about Tommy and Tracy all the time,” she argues as he sits down at the picnic table, wishing that it was time for them to go to school so he wouldn’t have to deal with this conversation anymore. “C’mon, Lukas,” she starts sweetly, “just… sit back with me.” 

   She sits down next to him then looks at him pleadingly, as if, if she looks at him like that he’d do anything for her. And technically he will because that is what a good boyfriend would do and he has to keep up appearances to keep her at his side, but if it wasn’t for that, the puppy dog look she gives him wouldn’t do a thing. “Please, baby.” 

   So, he sits back with her like she wants, but he does so begrudgingly. “Look up at the trees,” she says to him, staring up at the leaves of the trees as if they hold all the universe's deepest secrets. “The sun filtering down.” 

   “What are we doing?” he asks, not moved at all in the way she is, because he doesn’t understand dumb emotional, deep girl crap like this. Rose does this to him a lot, and he doesn’t want to resent her for it, but sometimes it makes it hard for him to pretend to be in love with her. 

   “This is the last thing they saw,” Rose says, her voice getting a little scratchy with emotions. “Imagine if we died young and beautiful. It’s so romantic,” she claims, moving away from him so she can look at his face. “Now they’ll be together forever.”

   When he feels her eyes boring into him, he tries to give her a smile, but he doesn’t put enough effort into it and it probably looks more like a grimace. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what she thinks at this point, because what she said was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever heard and left his throat clogged with guilt all over again. 

   Dying now, or ‘young and beautiful’ as she put it would not be romantic. He was almost killed just last week with Philip in his dad’s cabin, and the last word he would use to describe that is romantic. Sure, maybe some people would put the kind of Romeo and Juliet spin on it, but even that story, to him, wasn’t romantic in the least. It was a tragic love story, sure, but it wasn’t romantic. There isn’t anything pretty about death, and he doesn’t understand why girls always try to make it out to be that way. 

   He really just doesn’t understand Rose at all. 

*******

   When he gets to school with Rose, they’re told to go to the auditorium instead of their usual classes. He suddenly remembers that they have the overnight trip with the counselors tonight, and his breath clogs up with the guilt in his throat as panic seizes his heart. He can’t go to an overnight with counselors to talk about Tommy and Tracy, who were murdered because of him. He can hardly talk about it with Philip, who knows they were murdered and did not overdose, so how was he supposed to talk about it with strangers?

   When they get into the auditorium, they’re handed a pamphlet about the memorial service, and Lukas’ heart sinks into his stomach. He can’t sit through this. He doesn’t want to ‘share his memories’ over Tommy and Tracy when it was his fault they were dead in the first place! He sits down with Rose and Chad and all their other friends, staring blankly up at the stage where they have a slideshow of Tommy and Tracy playing while the principal gets up to speak. 

   He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.  _ He can’t breathe.  _ His eyes sting with tears as another picture of Tommy and Tracy comes up on screen of them laughing and smiling, with Tracy’s lips on Tommy’s cheek and looking so, so happy. Was that taken on the day they died? Was that- 

   He mutters something about the bathroom to Rose before he stands up and gets the hell out of the auditorium. He skips the bathroom since he can’t go in there without the risk of somebody catching him crying like a bitch, so he goes to the stairwell until he reaches the roof. Once he gets outside, he crouches down to the gravel-covered ground and holds the pamphlet in his shaking hands as he finally lets himself cry over the two deaths he caused. 

   He’s out there for about five minutes when Philip climbs the ladder to the roof and walks briskly over to him asking, “Lukas you alright? I saw you sneak out of the ceremony, what’s up?”

   “I can’t be crying like some bitch. Not in front of the whole school,” he says, wiping his nose with his shirt sleeve, still hesitant in meeting Philip’s eyes. It’s only Philip, the one person he shouldn’t feel so vulnerable to cry in front of, but he can’t help it. He isn’t supposed to cry like this. Even when he was young his dad always taught him that men didn’t cry, and even though he knows that isn’t really true, it’s not something he can just get over learning. 

   “It’s a memorial service, you’re supposed to cry. Everyone is upset about Tommy and Tracy.”

   “I’m not everyone am I?” Lukas asks Philip, a bitter smile pulling at his lips as he asks Philip the question that’s been haunting him from the moment he heard they were dead. 

   Philip is quiet for a moment, not sure how to respond with anything but the truth that yeah, it is Lukas’ fault, and when he does try to say something that is anything but that, Lukas cuts him off.

   “No. I know what you’re gonna say. They overdosed, it’s got nothing to do with us,” he spits as he stands up from his crouched position to walk toward the edge of the roof.

   “W-whoa whoa whoa,” Philip stammers out quickly, rushing over to him to grab his forearm as if he’s about to jump off the roof and splat on the ground, just as dead as Tommy and Tracy. Maybe he should. “What are you doing?” 

   “I keep seein’ it,” he starts, staring off at the road, gaze distant and eyes cloudy.

   “See what, what are you talking about?” 

   “The guy. I’m standing right behind him and holding the frying pan but I can’t move. He shoots you. And then he turns and looks straight at me. He’s gonna kill me. I can’t make it stop,” he says, retelling the images as they flit through his head in quick succession. It isn’t the only version of the nightmare that he’s had, but it’s the most frequent and it’s the one that wakes him up filled with the most terror. 

   “It’s never gonna stop. Not unless we tell,” Philip says, like he’s out of breath, and he inches Lukas away from the edge of the roof. “Look- look at me. I told you it’s only gonna get worse if you keep it a secret. This thing- it’s not just gonna go away, it doesn’t work like that.”

   The first thing Lukas wonders is if Philip is referring to the fact that he can’t stop kissing or thinking about Philip in the ways that he does or the murders. Then he wonders how in the hell Philip is so chill when Lukas feels like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin.

   “How come you’re so chill?”

   Philip bites his lip and looks down for a second, looking almost wounded by Lukas’ words, but Lukas isn’t sure how he could have possibly said something wrong. “If I can be cool for my mom I can be cool for you too.”

   Then Lukas gets it. He thinks about what kinds of things Philip must’ve seen with his mom high all the time, what kind of people he’s met and if he ever had to deal with his mom being crazy or nearly overdosing. He hates that Philip had to go through that because Philip was so nice and understanding he didn’t deserve any of that. Maybe Lukas did, but not Philip.

   “Your mom know you’re gay?” he asks, because obviously that’s one of the next things to pop inside his head. It’s just so strange to think about a parent knowing their kid is gay without being angry or resentful about it. His dad won’t ever know about his weird thoughts and feelings because he knows the anger and disdain that will come from it. He would rather his dad know a fake him than the person he really is.

   “Yeah,” Philip confirms, his thumbs stroking Lukas’ arms and Lukas can feel his racing heart slowing and calming with just that. “I told her about you,” he says, his voice going low and almost giddy at the end of his sentence, getting closer to Lukas as if he’s going to kiss him.

   An irrational kind of fear sparks through Lukas’ body instead of the happiness he should feel over the fact that Philip likes him enough, despite everything wrong with him, to tell his mom about him. But he can’t because he’s so  _ fucking scared  _ that all he can concentrate on is this voice in his head telling him that she’s going to find his dad or someone in town and tell them and then-

   Philip must see something in his face because he shakes his head, and that giddiness in his own expression melts away with a kind of resigned disappointment. “Sh-she won’t say anything.”

   “There’s nothin’ to say,” Lukas says, a little harsher than he meant, but it’s easier to put up walls around himself and hide behind anger than show the true helplessness that he feels constantly. Even with Philip. Even when he sees that disappointment and hurt cross over Philip’s face as he just goes along with whatever he says without putting up a fight because he knows it’s no use, he tells himself that it’s easier.

   “I can’t go to this stupid overnight with counselors, talking about my feelings.”

   “Yeah, I know i-it’s so dumb. So what do you want to do instead?”

   “I don’t know. Something to make me forget this shit.”

   Philip’s eyes light up with something, and he smiles up at Lukas lightly, reassuringly. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to the city.”  

   “Okay,” Lukas says after a moment or two of thinking it over. He didn’t see any better option. It wasn’t like they would be able to stay in Tivoli or Red Hook or really even Poughkeepsie in chance of running into somebody that knows they’re supposed to be on the stupid trip. Besides, being in a place where nobody knows who he is and couldn’t give less of a shit is comforting to him right now. He doesn’t want to be looked at as Lukas Waldenbeck, popular kid in Red Hook High, he just wants to be some stranger walking down the street with another boy.

   They go back into the school for the last bit of the service, and when Lukas sits back down next to Rose, she asks him if he’s feeling okay because he was in the bathroom for a long time. He says his stomach really hurt and he thought he was going to puke for a while, and she pulls a concerned face, but she doesn’t say much after that. Once the service is over, he grabs his jacket and backpack, and while Rose is distracted by Summer, he ducks out and into the parking lot.

   He goes straight to the tunnel instead of waiting for Philip in the parking lot where people could see them ride off together, and he texts Philip from there. Philip gets there within the next five minutes, abandoning his bike inside the tunnel to get on the back of Lukas’ after he hands him a spare helmet.

   “Where are we going in the city?” Lukas asks before he starts the engine.

   “Manhattan. I know that area, but first we need to get you a fake ID.”

   “You know where to get one of those?”

   Philip scoffs as if that’s the dumbest question Lukas has ever asked. “Obviously. I have one, remember?”

   That’s right. He bought them alcohol with it that one day. He’s surprised Helen didn’t take it away, but he wasn’t going to ask Philip about that right now. All he wanted to do was get out of this suffocating town and into the city where he can finally breathe for a bit. Maybe he and Philip can just run away there and never come back. Lukas knows that’s a stupid thing to think, but at the moment, it doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea.

   “Okay, just tell me where to go once we get out there,” Lukas says before he revs his engine, pulls out of the tunnel and heads down the road and into the city.

*******

   Lukas gets an ID made for him as soon as they get into the city, and the entire experience was much more nerve wracking than he thought it would be. Philip laughed at him the entire time, and the shady-looking guy that was giving him the ID had looked entirely too amused by the whole thing as well.

   After they had it made, Philip instructed Lukas to leave his bike inside the parking garage, and even though it cost twenty bucks to have it parked there, he would rather pay some money than risk getting it stolen.

   Now they’re walking down the street with the fake ID still in Lukas’ hands, and he can’t help but stare down at it. “They’re gonna know it’s fake,” he tells Philip as he shows it to him, “I mean, I look like a goon in this picture.”

   Philip leans down slightly to take a closer look at it, and he purses his lips slightly with a nod. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s not the picture.”

   Lukas pauses for a second then looks up at Philip who’s giving him a shit-eating grin, and he reaches out to shove him playfully, but he can’t help but smile as well. Banter and just talking to Philip is so much easier than with anyone Lukas knows, and maybe it’s because he can really be himself around him, but he feels so much calmer and less on edge when he’s with him.

   They keep walking down the street, and Lukas finally pockets the ID in order to keep himself from freaking out about it anymore. “Okay,” Philip says from beside him, “three things you love, three things you hate. Go.”

   Lukas looks away from the skyline to look back at Philip with his eyebrows pinched together slightly in confusion. “What?”

   “I don’t know anything about you.”

   Lukas thinks that might be the most ridiculous thing he’s heard in his entire life. Philip knows more about him than anybody else does, and maybe it isn’t the little things like his favorite color or food or any of that other shit that everybody else does, but he knows the few things that Lukas will never, ever tell another soul.

   “You know a lot about me.”

   “I know that you jump bikes and that you that I… am a better kisser than Rose.” He says it like knowing Lukas thinks Philip is a better kisser than Rose is one of the most basic things about him. But it’s not. Lukas doesn’t know how to get it across to Philip that he knows more about him than anybody else will ever know.

   “I’m not really into her,” he decides to say, and when he finally voices the one thing he’s been thinking for the past two years or so, it feels like something heavy has lifted off his chest.

   “Yeah, okay, that’s one thing,” Philip says, sort of uncaringly. “But what else? We don’t ever talk.”

   “Everyone thinks I’m cool because I don’t talk,” Lukas finally starts to say after a little while of thinking of what he could say to that. “But it’s just cuz I never know what to say.”

   “I bet you got lots to say,” Philip says with a roll of his eyes, and Lukas looks over at him. He really doesn’t have a lot to say, not really. Most of what he wishes he could say is stuff that he never can, and so he’s left with nothing much. He can only pretend to be interested in certain things for so long before he runs out of things to say about it. People around him never take his silence as disinterest, they just think he’s aloof in some sort of badass way.

   “Not really.”

   Philip slows his steps after he says that, and Lukas stops in confusion, wondering if he possibly could have said something wrong. He seems to do that a lot with Philip.

   “What?”

   Philip is quiet for a second as he scans Lukas’ face and bites his lip, and Lukas can’t help but track the movement closely.

   “I never used a condom before. I mean I-I carry one with me but I’ve never… done it.” He stares at Lukas’ mouth heatedly as he speaks, and Lukas fights the urge to lick his lips under Philip’s gaze. Then, Philip gives him this sort of half smile and smirk, turns around and starts walking back down the street with his hands in his jacket pockets.

   Lukas puts his own hands back in his pockets and follows Philip back down the street, trying to not think about how the newfound knowledge left him feeling as thrilled as it did. So what if Philip had never done anything with anybody before him before? It didn’t mean anything. But even as Lukas tries to reason with himself, he can’t help the smile that spreads over his face for the briefest of seconds as he jogs to catch up with Philip.

   “You feeling hungry?” Philip asks when Lukas catches up to him. “I know this pizza place down the street, and before we leave you need to have an actual good pizza.”

   “The pizza in Tivoli is just fine. What are you talking about?”

   Philip looks at him like he’s actually deeply offended him, then he’s grabbing Lukas by the wrist, dragging him down the street and shaking his head. “I cannot believe you just said that. I’m going to rock your world with this pizza, just wait.”

   Lukas snorts. “Rock my world, huh? That’s a very bold claim. You sure you’re gonna be able to hold yourself to it?”

   “I don’t lie about my pizza. When I say it’s going to rock your world, it’s going to rock your world,” Philip says, turning to look at Lukas over his shoulder, and he gives him that smile again that has Lukas’ heart jumping in his chest.

   When they get to the pizza place, it isn’t very crowded. It’s past lunchtime by now, so that’s probably why, and Lukas is kind of thankful for the emptiness of it. He knows that people here don’t know who he and Philip are, and that they couldn’t care less, but he’s still so used to hiding and pretending that he isn’t quite ready to be sharing a pizza with Philip in a restaurant like they’re on a  _ date. _

_    Is this a date?  _ The thought slaps into Lukas’ head before he can stop it, but as soon as it does, he can’t stop thinking about it. It shouldn’t be a date, he still has a girlfriend even though it’s a half-assed relationship on his part, and Philip is a  _ boy  _ but… but something inside him wants this so much to be a date that the thought won’t quiet down.

   “Get whatever you want. I’ve got the money for this, actually,” Philip says when they sit down at one of the hard booths, and Lukas peers up at him over the top of his menu. He has no idea what he wants. All of the pizzas have toppings he’s never even considered putting on top of his pizza, but when he reads through it, they all sound like they’d be delicious.

   “Um.”

   “I told you that Tivoli pizza doesn’t compare and you haven’t even tasted it yet,” Philip mocks as soon as he realizes that Lukas is feeling overwhelmed by just the selection of choices. “You’re a meat-lover right?”

   Lukas nods, and his eyes drift down to the pizza’s listed underneath the category  **Premium Meats.**

   “I suggest you get the New York Village then. I’ve had it once, and even though I usually don’t like too much meat, it was great.”

   Lukas scans through the ingredients on the New York Village, and just reading through them has his mouth watering. He isn’t too sure if he’ll ever be satisfied with Tivoli pizza ever again, and he hasn’t even tasted the damn city pizza yet. If it’s as great as Philip is making it out to be, then he’ll move out here just for the pizza.

   As soon as he’s made his decision, their waitress makes her way over with the sodas they ordered just a couple minutes ago. She doesn’t look like she’s ever even stepped foot inside the country. She’s got piercings all along her ears, in her nose, her lip, and her eyebrow with tattoos snaking down her arms and her black hair highlighted with dark purple and pink. Lukas thinks she looks really cool. He’s not about to say that aloud, but he’s never seen a girl with so much personality on her skin and in her hair.

   “What can I get you boys?” she asks, and smiles kindly. She looks a little intimidating on the outside, but aside from the tattoos and the piercings, she’s been super nice so far.

   “I’ll have the Greek Pizza, and country boy over here will have the New York Village,” Philip says, ordering for the both of them. As soon as the words ‘country boy’ are out of Philip’s mouth, the waitress looks over at Lukas with sudden interest and a smirk.

   “Country boy, huh? This your first New York city pizza?”

   “Uh, yeah.” Maybe he really was missing out on some kickass pizza if everyone was acting like he’s been locked away from some sort of salvation.

   “Good luck going back to the country after this, then. I’ve heard some people move here just for the pizza, and I don’t blame them,” she says with a wink, then she’s turning away to put their orders in.

   “Is the pizza here really  _ that  _ good?”

   “Absolutely.”

   “I’ll believe it when I taste it,” Lukas settles for, and sits back against the booth while he waits for their pizzas to be delivered. 

   They don’t talk much while they wait, but it isn’t an awkward silence that fills up between them. It’s comfortable, like Philip is respecting that Lukas doesn’t ever have much of anything to say, and Lukas is relieved that he won’t be pressured to speak.

   He looks over at Philip, and he sort of wants to lean across the table to kiss him. He doesn’t, obviously, because that would be a ridiculous thing to do. Luckily, their waitress comes to their table before he gives into the dangerous urge to press his mouth to Philip’s in public. Kissing Philip in private is precarious enough, and to do it in public… that’s like accepting this part of him is normal when it isn’t.

   “Prepare yourself, country boy. You’ll never want to leave after you get a bite of this stuff,” their waitress says teasingly with a giggle as she sets the pizza down in front of him. She gives Philip his, then she turns to walk toward another table where a middle-aged couple is sitting.  

   Philip stares at him expectedly as Lukas picks up a slice of the pizza he ordered, and just by the look and the smell of it, he can tell it’s going to be better than any Tivoli pizza he’s had. He almost doesn’t want to give Philip the satisfaction of being right about this, but it smells so damn good he thinks Philip deserves to be right about this. He takes a bite, and as soon as the pizza is in his mouth, he moans embarrassingly around it.

   “Oh my God,” he says, and Philip throws his head back and laughs. “The waitress is right, I’m never leaving. I’m going to move here just for this.”

   Philip keeps laughing, and each time he tries to speak, he just dissolves into more giggles. Lukas can’t help but stare adoringly at him as he keeps laughing.  He doesn’t think he’s ever seen something as cute as this. And though something in his mind is shaking at him for thinking about another boy being so cute so openly and unashamedly, he doesn’t care. He should be able to admire Philip because he’s somebody worthy of being admired, and he’s not going to stop no matter how much that voice in his head yells at him for it.

   “You  _ moaned  _ oh my God!” Philip finally manages to get out through his laughter, and he wipes an actual tear from the corner of his eye as he finally begins to calm down. “Should I be jealous of the pizza?”

   “It’s possible,” Lukas teases back, taking another bite and closing his eyes exaggeratedly with a blissful sigh. “I don’t think anything will ever compare again.”

   “I can’t believe I have to compete with  _ pizza _ ,” Philip chuckles, but he shoves his own pizza into his mouth, so Lukas doesn’t bother replying while Philip reunites with his long lost love, if the expression on his face is anything to go by.

   They finish their pizzas in silence, and once the pizzas are gone, Lukas leans back in the booth with his hands over his stomach and groaning. “Why did I eat all that?”

   “Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Philip jibes, tossing his napkin onto the empty plate after he finishes wiping the grease from his mouth. “C’mon, we just gotta walk this off.”

   “You walk it off. I’m just gonna stay here and die. I’m dying, Philip.”

   “Is the dying worth it?”

   Lukas opens his eyes and looks at Philip in the face as he says, in total seriousness, “totally.”

   Philip laughs, rolls his eyes again and then stands while he’s grabbing his wallet from his back pocket. “I’m going to pay for this. If you’re not in a food coma by the time I get back we’ll head down to this cool record store I know.”

   Lukas perks up as soon as Philip mentions a record store, and he follows Philip’s retreating figure. He sits up slowly as Philip is paying for their pizzas, and the thought of  _ is this a date?  _ enters his mind a couple more times.

   Philip makes his way back to him while he’s tucking the receipt in his wallet, and Lukas smiles a little loosely at him. The food has made him feel a lot more content and relaxed, and he thinks that coming to the city was the best idea that Philip has ever had in his entire life. “You wanna go to that record shop? They have a lot of good stuff.”

   “Yeah, okay,” Lukas says with a nod, then struggles a bit to stand up, feeling as if he gained about twenty pounds. “Where’s it at?”

   “A couple blocks away. Afterwards I thought it would be cool to go see Central Park.”

   “Yeah, man, that sounds good,” Lukas nods, then follows Philip down a couple blocks until they get to a dingy looking building that Lukas would have missed if he wasn’t following Philip so closely.

   “This place?” he asks, gesturing to it, and Philip rolls his eyes at him.

   “Yes, this place. Trust me, there’s amazing stuff in here.” Despite Lukas’ wariness about the place, he follows Philip inside and it ends up being a lot nicer inside than out. “How did you even find this?”

   “Just exploring one day. There was nothing much to do at home, so I went out and just walked around a lot. I found this place a couple years ago and it’s one of my favorite places.”

   He and Philip look around the shop for a bit, and start discussing a couple of their favorite oldish bands, like The Ramones and Nirvana. They spend nearly an hour there, which Lukas is almost surprised by since he didn’t think he would ever spend so much time in a record shop, but this place had a ton of cool, old stuff that was interesting to look at.

   They didn’t buy anything, mostly because neither of them had a record player, and Lukas didn’t need his dad finding out that he skipped the school’s stupid trip to go into the city with Philip Shea. That was something his dad certainly wouldn’t get over.

   After, they go to Central Park just like Philip suggested. Lukas had gone before once on a field trip when he was in seventh grade, but it was so much cooler now since he was able to go wherever he wanted inside the park, instead of just the select few places the school allowed him to venture to.

   They talk the entire time they walk around the park, and for once Lukas doesn’t have to struggle to find something to say. With Philip it’s so easy to talk and just be himself, so the couple hours they spend there flies by, and by the time they leave, it’s already dark out. Once they’re back onto the street, Philip leads him to the club that he had in mind to go to earlier when they were getting Lukas’ fake ID.

   When they get into the line, Lukas pulls his fake ID out and starts to rub his thumb over it, unable to stop staring at it and find every single thing wrong with it. Philip eventually catches onto what he’s doing due to his sudden silence, and turns to look at him over his shoulder with a scoff.

   “You are obsessed with that thing,” he mutters.

   “I don’t think I look like a Rick Anderton,” Lukas says, just saying the first thing that comes to his mind. They’re so close to the bouncer now that he can hear the blasting music coming from inside the club, and his palms are beginning to sweat with anxiety.

   “You’re whoever it says you are, just go with it,” Philip tells him, then takes the ID from Lukas’ hands when the people in front of them are let inside. Philip hands their IDs to the bouncer, who’s a big, burly man who could probably take them both down in two seconds flat, but Philip folds his arms across his chest and squares his chin up at him, looking defiant.

   They stand there for a few seconds as the man overlooks the IDs, then he hands them back to put a stamp on their wrists. Lukas follows quickly after Philip as soon as they’re let in before the man can change his mind about letting them inside.

   But as soon as he steps inside and takes in his surroundings, he wishes that the man had caught them. There are men all around them dancing, and touching and kissing and Lukas feels his entire body go rigid at the sight of them. There are a few girls off to the side that are also kissing, and something inside Lukas recoils at the sight. Seeing two guys kiss, as shocking as it was, had some sort of heat curling in his lower belly and he jerks back, away from the men and the feeling.

   “What the hell Philip? You think this is a joke?”

   “What?”

   “Are you serious?”

   The playfulness in Philip’s voice melts away in an instant, “what, what?”

   “This is a gay club?”

   “Where did you think we were going?” Philip asks through a half-laugh, as if Lukas asking this question was the most absurd thing he’s ever heard.

   “A regular club.”

   “Yeah, okay, but we’re here now so let’s get a drink.”

   No way. No, he can’t stay in here for another minute or the next thing he knows is this heat is going to overtake him and he’ll drag Philip out to the dancefloor and-

   “I’m not staying here.”

   “I’m not going to leave until we get a drink!”

   More people begin to come inside, brushing past him and Philip, and he shakes his head. “Whatever,” he says, then ducks out of the club before Philip can say anything more and actually convince him to stay.

   He’s tempted to walk down the street, get an uber and ride down to the parking garage where his bike is, but he stays put outside the club because he’s not about to leave Philip completely alone inside the city, no matter how angry he is.

   He can’t believe Philip brought him to a gay club. He told him he wanted to forget everything, not be reminded that he’s not fucking normal and belongs inside a  _ gay club  _ instead of one where pretty girls in low-cut shirts, skirts and dresses are wandering around.

   And now, he’s standing outside in the cold while Philip is inside the gay club where any guy could think he’s available and just take advantage of-

   Wait a second. Philip  _ is  _ available, Lukas reminds himself furiously. Just because they make out sometimes and go into the city together like it’s a date, does not mean Philip is his- his  _ boyfriend  _ or something. He’s still got Rose and… well, Philip can do whatever the hell he wants with whoever the hell he wants. Lukas doesn’t have any say in that.

   Lukas tries to ignore how tight his chest feels at the thought of Philip getting a drink bought for him, or taken to the dancefloor by some handsome guy to be grinded against, and then into the bathroom to do whatever happens in club bathrooms behind a locked stall door. He hates the imagery. He hates the thought of Philip being doted on by some other guy, being kissed by someone else, being  _ touched  _ by someone else.

   Lukas begins to look around for anything else to distract him, and he ends up spotting a couple of guys embracing in front of a cab. He blinks at the sight, then looks down because he feels as if he saw something tender that he wasn’t meant to. He looks over to his side instead and happens to see a couple guys further down the block, leaning against the wall just talking and holding hands.

   He takes a deep breath through his nose and looks down at the ground, figuring that’s the safest place to look. He’s never seen two guys doing anything remotely romantic before, and to see it out here, in public where anybody can see them, is strange. It’s not bad, not really, it doesn’t make him uncomfortable like it probably should, but it just is weird. Guys in Tivoli would never be seen kissing or hugging or even holding hands while talking.

   To see it, Lukas suddenly starts to think that maybe it isn’t as weird or bad as everyone in town makes it out to be. There are a lot of guys, just in this specific area, that are obviously gay and nobody is looking at them as if they’re sick people that need to be fixed. It’s reassuring, in a way, but before he can ponder on it too much further, Philip is back outside and all the anger from earlier wedges in his throat.

   “Asshole,” he snaps, then turns to start walking away from Philip so they can just go home.

   “Why are you so pissed off?” Philip asks from behind him, completely clueless, even though it should be the most obvious thing in the world.

   He turns to start walking across the crosswalk and to the other side of the street as he starts to speak. “I told you I wanted to get away from all the shit that’s going on, and you bring me here?”

   “No-nobody cares who you are here. You could be Rick Anderton. Nobody cares, d-don’t you get that?” Philip asks, gesturing around wildly as he speaks, as if he can’t contain himself anymore, and is just desperate to get the fact that nobody cares in the city through his head.

   Lukas shakes his head as he starts looking around, wanting nothing more than to get an uber and just drive somewhere else. Not Tivoli. Not home, because there he feels more suffocated than anything else, and he doesn’t think he can deal with going back there tonight. But if there was a place to get away from himself, God, he’d go there in a heartbeat.

   “C’mon, I-I thought… I thought this would help.”

   Lukas finally looks down at Philip’s face, and he just looks so defeated that all the anger and frustration melts away. He wants Philip to go back to how he was in the pizza place when he was laughing so hard he was tearing up, or in Central Park when he was strolling around beside him completely relaxed and seeming like he was in his domain. This is the Philip from Tivoli where they both feel so helpless, and he wants Philip to forget all that shit just as much as he does.

   “You know, if my mom was alive… maybe I’d tell her about you, too.” Lukas isn’t really sure where this came from, but once the words are out of his mouth, he realizes how true they are. He doesn’t remember much about his mom, but he remembers how kind and loving she was to him, so unlike his dad, and he doesn’t think he’d ever keep anything from her. Not even this dark, twisted, sick part of himself.

   But being happy with Philip doesn’t seem twisted or sick. It feels like a taste of freedom he’s longed for, for so many years, and he wishes more than anything that his mom was here to know about the freedom and lightness he feels when he’s with Philip. When it’s just him and Philip in their own little world with nobody else to barge on in and tear them away from it. When it’s just them being happy.

   Philip is stunned into silence, but the defeated expression on his face has been replaced with something like awe, and Lukas is satisfied with just that.

   “That’s the third thing.”

   “What?” Philip finally asks, and his voice is a little rough, and that feeling from the pizza place of wanting to kiss Philip comes back, and it hits Lukas hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs for just a moment. He won’t be able to ignore it this time.

   “You said you wanted to know three things about me.”

   Philip nods with a little hum, and Lukas feels himself smiling before he can think to stop it. Then, he’s got one hand on Philip’s shoulder, his eyes locked on Philip’s lips, and he’s leaning in to kiss him in the middle of Manhattan where anybody can see them.

   They’re lips press together just another second later, and Lukas’ hand trails up to the back of Philip’s neck, guiding him in to meet him, though Philip doesn’t need any prompting. He kisses Philip softly, and it lasts for just a few seconds, but when he pulls back, Philip’s eyes are glazed over and his lips are parted as if they were still kissing, looking completely amazed and beautiful.

   “You just kissed me… outside… in public.”

   Lukas, now hearing it said aloud, is a little more than blown away himself. “I didn’t,” he says, a little sarcastically, but also not. The regular him would have never kissed Philip, or any guy for that matter, outside where other people could see, but he felt as if he were floating on air right now and he just didn’t care who saw. “Rick Anderton did.”

   Philip breaks out into a grin and he laughs a bit before saying, “I like Rick Anderton.”

   Lukas really likes him, too. So, with the confidence that came with being Rick Anderton for the night, he laughs then leans in to kiss Philip one more time, brief and chaste, but not any less meaningful. When he pulls back, Philip looks astonished for the second time, but Lukas doesn’t stay put to look at his expression for a whole lot longer. Instead, he takes Philip’s hand like he saw those two other guys from earlier doing, and tugs him along across the street.

   “Wh-where are you wanting to go?” Philip asks him when they’re already halfway down the street, and Lukas can see the Empire State Building from where they are. Ever since he was little, he’s wanted to go to the very top and look down at the city. He remembers seeing it on field trips and always wanting to go but never being allowed because of the school’s small budget. But now he can, and he wants to share this experience with Philip.

   “Ever been on the top of the Empire State Building?” Lukas asks him, looking at Philip over his shoulder. Their hands are still clasped, but nobody around them pays them any attention, so Lukas doesn’t let go of him. He wants to let himself have this, even if it is just for a night. He doesn’t have to be Lukas Waldenbeck here who has to hide himself away from everybody, he can be Rick Anderton who nobody knows about and who can hold another boy’s hand in the crowded street because he  _ wants  _ to.

   “No,” Philip answers, his voice a little sad almost, “we never had the money. My mom said she went when she was pregnant with me, when my dad was still around, but… I’ve never been able to see it.”

   Lukas grits his teeth at the mention of Philip’s absentee father, but he doesn’t say anything about it. “You wanna go now? I’ve always wanted to see it.”

   “Lukas, it isn’t a free thing. It’s like forty bucks to get in. Don’t worry about it,” Philip says, tugging a bit on his hand to get him to turn around, but Lukas doesn’t pay any attention to it. It’s almost as if he just doesn’t want Lukas to spend extra money on him, but Lukas wants to be able to give him this. Besides, he wants to see it himself, too.

   “I want to see it, too. I’ve got like two-hundred bucks on me, it’s fine. We can even get a place to crash after if you want.”

   “That’s too much! Lukas, just-”

   Lukas cuts Philip off before he can say anything more. “It’s not. We both want to see the Empire State Building, so we’ll go. We both are going to need sleep, and I don't know about you, but I’m not about to sleep on the dirty New York pavement like a homeless man.”

Philip finally stops protesting behind him, and just follows Lukas down the street until the entrance of the Empire State Building. When they first step inside the building, Lukas can tell he’s not the only one floored by the interior. Everything is made up of marble, like some mansion straight out of a Hollywood movie. 

   Since it’s so late at night, there aren’t as many people around them as Lukas expected, and after a couple of minutes of admiring the observatory entrance and lobby, he and Philip travel up the escalator to the ticket office. Each of the tickets are almost forty dollars, but just from the interior of the building, Lukas knows he’s not going to regret spending nearly eighty dollars for this. He sees Philip cringe from beside him as he hands the employee his money in exchange for a couple tickets, so Lukas bumps his shoulder with Philip’s gently with a small grin as he hands him his ticket.

   "It’s worth it. When are either of us going to get a chance like this again?”

   Philip takes the ticket with a small smile, then follows Lukas over to the Sustainability Exhibit. They don’t spend too much time in there, because as interesting as some of it is, it’s clear they both just want to get to the observation deck and look down at the city, all lit up by the night.

   It takes them about thirty minutes to get to the Observation Deck, and when they step outside and look down at the city laid out below them, Lukas knows spending that money was well worth it.

   “Holy shit,” Philip breathes from beside him, practically sticking his face through the barrier that prevents anybody from falling, and Lukas would have laughed at how in awe Philip sounded if he wasn’t feeling so breathless himself.

   From below, on the streets, the city didn’t look nearly this pretty. There was trash littering the sidewalks, cars inching along the roads and honking angrily at each other, people yelling at one another on the sidewalk, and a constant noise that made Lukas feel a little on edge, not used to anything but the quiet stillness of the country. But from up here, with all the city lights illuminating in the dark so brightly the stars in the sky are dimmed, and the hustle and bustle from below invisible, the city looks incredibly peaceful, like it’s something out of a dream.

   Lukas keeps staring down at the city lights, until a flurry of movement beside him catches his attention, and he sees Philip trying to capture the beauty of the city through his crappy phone camera. The pictures won’t ever compare to the real deal, but if anybody can come close to it, it’d be Philip’s photos. Lukas knows what he can do with a camera, even one as crappy as the one on his phone, and he never thought he would be so fascinated by pictures, but he’s always excited to see the ones Philip takes.

   “Thanks for paying for this,” Philip says after a few more minutes of snapping pictures and just admiring the view in silence.

   “It was totally worth it. You better send me a few of those pictures.”

   “Way ahead of you,” Philip says, right before Lukas’ phone vibrates four or five times in his back pocket. “I think they have a gift shop. Do you want to stop by there?”

   “Did you want something from there?”

   Philip’s face colors slightly at Lukas’ words, but maybe it’s just from the cold, and shakes his head at him. “N-no, I meant… did you want anything?”

   “Oh, no, these pictures are good enough. I’ve still got to pay for a motel room. Do you know a good motel around here?”

   “The one closest to here is an inn, but I’m pretty sure it’s over one hundred bucks a night. Do you want me to look up something cheaper on my phone?”

   “No, it’s fine. I’d rather spend a little extra cash on a nice room instead of saving money and getting a room that has roaches crawling all over me while I’m sleeping,” Lukas says, and they take one last look at the scenery in front of them before heading back down to the ground.

*******

   Lukas ends up spending one hundred and six bucks on a room with just one bed, since he didn’t have enough money to pay for one with two, but with everything he and Philip have done tonight, sharing a bed is hardly a concern for him right now. As soon as they got inside the room he feels the day’s exhaustion sweep over him, tempting him straight to the bed, but he knows a shower is necessary after spending an entire day walking around the city.

   “You wanna shower first?” he asks Philip when he sits down on the foot of the bed, but Philip shakes his head.

   “No. You paid for the room, so the least I can do is let you shower and get to sleep first.”

   Lukas doesn’t have the energy to argue with him over that, so he sluggishly stands and makes his way to the bathroom. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in the shower, mostly because he’s about to pass out where he stands, but also because he does want to save enough hot water for Philip so he doesn’t shiver through his entire shower.

   When he gets out, that’s when he realizes he doesn’t have any extra clothes. He grimaces as he pulls on the same boxers and pants as he has all day, forgoing his shirt until tomorrow morning when they have to head back to Tivoli. When he walks back out into the main part of the motel room, Philip seems to be half asleep, sitting where Lukas left him, just staring at the TV, blinking slowly.

   “You gonna pass out in the shower?”

   If Philip had been slightly more awake, Lukas is sure that he would have jumped at the sudden sound of his voice, but all he does now is twitch slightly and turn to look at him, his eyes heavy lidded. Lukas wants to kiss him all over again. “Probably. You gonna be my knight in shining armor to come save me?”

   "Nah, I’ll leave you in there. Sleeping in the tub isn’t that bad.”

   “Tell that to my cramping legs and neck tomorrow,” Philip retorts, and Lukas doesn’t really have the energy to laugh right now, but he does snort. Neither of them say anything else, too tired to come up with anything more to say, so Philip disappears into the hotel bathroom just a few seconds later.

   As soon as Lukas hears the water turn on, he falls into the bed and buries his face into the pillow, closing his eyes and letting himself relax into the comfortable mattress, not caring about how wet his hair is still; he’ll just flip the pillow around if he has to. After about ten minutes of slipping in and out of half-consciousness, just when he’s really starting to think that Philip might have passed out in the shower after all and he has to go and save him from drowning, the bathroom door creaks open and Philip stumbles over to the bed, making entirely too much noise.

   “Walk much?” 

   “Shut up. I almost broke my face like three times. I don’t need your shit.”

   “Oh, you poor princess,” Lukas coos mockingly, then once Philip is settled on the bed and tucked under the covers, he receives a harsh shove on the shoulder.  

   “I hate you. You suck,” Philip grumbles into his own pillow, but he’s still got enough energy to glare up at Lukas. The pout in his bottom lip doesn’t make him look all that threatening though, and all his pout makes Lukas want to do is kiss him.

   He doesn’t kiss him, though it’s a near thing, and hums in response instead. His brain doesn’t have enough power to come up with some sort of witty retort, and there’s this chilly feeling creeping up along his skin with the realization that he and Philip are about to sleep together, albeit innocently, in the same bed.

   Suddenly, he feels Philip’s warm palm pressing against his upper arm and Lukas looks down to meet Philip’s tired, benign chocolate eyes, then his eyes drift down to his mouth again just to see one corner of it turned down in concern. “You’re freaking out,” he says gently.

   Lukas pinches his eyebrows together and shakes his head in denial, though there isn’t much he can deny. “No,” he protests weakly because he knows that he’s freaking out and he really hates that he is. He isn’t supposed to be freaked out Lukas Waldenbeck that he wanted to leave behind the city limits, he’s supposed to have the confidence that came with Rick Anderton. “I’m not.”

   “You are,” Philip pushes, then takes his hand away from Lukas’ arm, and Lukas immediately longs for the warmth back. “It’s okay. You- you’ve done a lot today I never expected you to do, especially so soon. It’s okay that you’re a little freaked out now; it’s normal.”

   “I don’t want to be freaking out,” Lukas says, closing his eyes tight. He isn’t about to open up completely and tell Philip about how  _ normal  _ he’s felt here with him, for the first time ever in his life, or at least since after his mom died, but he wants to. He thinks Philip deserves to at least hear that, but his tongue feels like cotton against the roof of his mouth and he can’t unstick it. “I was fine  _ thirty seconds ago _ .”

   “Yeah, but it’s okay that you aren’t now. Maybe… you’re just not ready for this. It’s okay, I’ll sleep on the couch.” Then, Philip is lifting himself up from the bed and Lukas can’t bring himself to reach out and tug him back into bed with him, because Philip is right. He isn’t ready to share a bed with him yet even though it’s less than kissing or anything else they’ve done today, but something about it feels too intimate. It feels that if he shares a bed with Philip right now, he’s going to go down a road he isn’t ready to go down yet. And maybe that’s okay, maybe that’s the better and safer option right now, but that doesn’t mean that this crushing feeling of disappointment and guilt just evaporates.

   He hears, more than sees, Philip get a spare blanket and pillow from the closet, and he’s a little relieved that he can’t see his expression. Philip said that it was okay, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t disappointed either. That just makes the guilt churn a little harder, and Lukas clenches his jaw and closes his eyes in an attempt to ebb it away. He hears Philip set up the couch and lie down, and after that everything is quiet except from the rustling of blankets every so often when Philip shifts.

   Despite how tired he is, Lukas doesn’t sleep much that night.

*******

   They force themselves to wake up at five-thirty the next morning, getting out of bed at the last possible minute. They have school today and it would be suspicious enough that they skipped the overnight with counselors, and if they wound up skipping the entire next day too… Lukas doesn’t even want to think about the rumors that would spread.

   Lukas is too tired to even wonder if he’s being awkward around Philip after what happened last night when he started freaking out about them sharing a bed together, and he can’t tell if Philip isn’t talking to him because he’s upset now or if he’s just tired. They stumble out of the hotel room then blearily make their way down the sidewalk with the rest of working people that are sleepily heading to work, get to the parking garage, then stop by a donut shop about halfway back to town.

   They have enough time to get a couple donuts and good coffee, so they eat inside the donut shop, still not saying much. Philip doesn’t  _ seem  _ upset, and he hasn’t ever been more of a talker than Lukas, so he tries to not read too much into it. When they have some coffee in their system and the bags under their eyes aren’t as prominent as they were when they first walked inside the donut shop, Philip gives Lukas a small grin behind the rim of his coffee cup, and Lukas can tell by the way Philip’s eyes kind of crinkle at the corners.

   “You feeling better?” Philip asks him softly, almost hesitantly, which Lukas thinks is a strange way for Philip to sound. Philip doesn’t have an overwhelmingly good amount of confidence, at least not that Lukas has noticed, but he doesn’t often sound hesitant or reluctant.

   “I’m not freaking out anymore if that’s what you mean,” Lukas murmurs behind his own coffee cup. He still feels guilty over Philip sleeping on the couch because he isn’t brave enough to share a bed with him; the least he could have done was take the couch instead, but he didn’t even do that. “I was fine after-”

   “I got on the couch? I thought you would. You know… I want to help you, Lukas. Forcing you to do things you aren’t comfortable with yet isn’t the way to do that. I’m not- it didn’t hurt my feelings or anything. I get it. I’m gay too, you know?”

   Lukas’ body rocks back as if Philip physically reached across the table and slapped him, but he might as well have done that very thing. They weren’t in the city anymore, Lukas couldn’t pretend to be somebody like Rick Anderton anymore, and Philip couldn’t say things like that anymore. “I’m not,” he hisses, and Philip blinks, flinching back himself a little. Lukas doesn’t have it in him to feel bad, he’s too flooded with panic over the thought that someone could have  _ heard.  _ “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but it’s not that.”

   “Right,” Philip drawls, and this time he is upset, Lukas would be dumb not to be able to pick up on that. “I guess you don’t need any help then.”

   “You’re right, I don’t,” Lukas snaps, because admitting that he did need help with whatever was wrong with him was admitting that he really was… well, gay. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t- he just had something off about him and sometimes he wanted to kiss Philip and look at other guys he thought were good-looking but that didn’t mean- it  _ couldn’t  _ mean that he was gay. Gay people in Tivoli never stayed, gay kids in Tivoli never heard from their parents again after they were found out, gay kids in Tivoli just didn’t make it there. He wasn’t going to be one of those kids.

   “Let’s just go. I need you to drop me off on my road so I can get new clothes,” Philip says, his voice terse as he throws his half-empty coffee cup away and the bag his donut came in. Lukas blinks up at him and he knows, no matter how much he wants it to, this friendship between them isn’t going to last. It isn’t going to become anything more like Philip probably wants it to, it’s just going to disintegrate until they don’t talk to each other anymore at all. Lukas is dreading the time when that happens, but there’s no way he’ll be able to stop it.

   “Fine,” Lukas replies, stands to toss his trash as well before they head out to where Lukas parked his bike. They get into Tivoli within another fifteen minutes, and Lukas drops Philip off at the end of his road just like he asked him to earlier. When Philip clambers off the bike and hands him back his helmet, he stands there as if he’s expecting Lukas to say something, maybe an apology. Lukas should, he really should say that he’s sorry, but he can’t bring himself to because if he apologizes then that means maybe Philip is right and he just can’t be.

   So, instead of saying what it is that Philip is wanting, he tucks the helmet up underneath his arm and speeds down the road towards his house. If luck is on his side then his dad should already be gone and shouldn’t even know that Lukas had skipped the overnight trip with counselors. Luck hasn’t been on his side much at all today thus far, but when he gets home to change his clothes, his dad isn’t there and is probably at the school waiting to pick him up to bring his home so he can change. He stalls going to the school so he doesn’t run into his dad on the way there, and he leaves at the last possible minute.

   As soon as he steps through the doors of the school, all eyes are on him in the hallway and all the whispers cease. Shit.


	9. Sex Tapes and Bike Tricks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay for anyone who was waiting for an update! I got some major writer's block but I've gotten through it now!

**Part Nine**

**Sex Tapes and Bike Tricks**

**“You touch her skin and then you think, ‘yeah she is beautiful, but she don’t mean a thing to me’”**

**Tiny Vessels by Death Cab for Cutie**

 

Lukas’ blood runs cold as he meets everyone’s eyes, and for a long few seconds he expects somebody to suddenly call him a fag or ask if he’s sucking dick now, because that’s the kind of thing he expects to hear when people find out he’s wrong in so many ways, but nobody says that; they don’t say anything at all. People stare at him for a long time, but nobody is looking at him with malice, and his heart calms slightly in his chest when Rose strides forward, throwing annoyed glances at everybody around them. 

 

  “He wasn’t at the overnight with counselors, so what? He has better things to do you know?” Rose snaps at everybody as she takes his hand and starts leading him away from all the eyes. Chad awkwardly breaks away from their group of friends and follows them on down the hall, and eventually, everyone behind them starts to talk about whatever it is they talk about. Lukas can hear his name in a few of their hushed conversations as they pass, but he can hear it’s nothing about how he skipped the trip, how they don’t know how his dad hasn’t beat his ass yet, but there’s nothing about Philip and that’s all Lukas really cares about. 

  “They’ve been doing this since the bus left yesterday. It’s so annoying,” Rose continues to rant once they get further on down the hallway, closer to Lukas’ first period classroom. Her eyes lock onto him, and there’s a confused tilt to her head and a twist to her mouth that tells Lukas she’s about to ask a question she knows he might not like. “ _ Why  _ didn’t you go, though? You were here yesterday morning for the memorial service. You know this overnight was mandatory, right?” 

 

  “Yeah, I know,” Lukas replies with a sort of sheepish shrug of his shoulders, not able to stop his eyes from darting around in search for Philip. People must be talking about him skipping too, but maybe not since he is a city kid and they must’ve had their fill of rumors about him by now. He looks back at Rose, and her eyebrows are drawn together now. “I just- it’s stupid. I don’t want to talk about my feelings with some strangers. They’re dead- it… it sucks and it’s weird but I’m not about to go out with people I don’t care about to talk about it.” He pauses for a second and notices how Chad is raising an eyebrow at him, so Lukas trugs along until he’s able to come up with an excuse that sounds remotely close to something he would normally say. “I also have a race to train for. I don’t have time for dumb overnights with counselors.” 

 

  “Mr. Lewis is gonna be pissed,” Chad pipes in next to Rose, and both her and Lukas turn to look at him. “I mean, you and that Philip kid got in a fight just a couple of days ago. He’s gonna wonder why you guys skipped this thing.” 

 

  “He skipped too?” Lukas asks, since it’s easier to play dumb than admit that he knew Philip wasn’t there; that they skipped together inside the city and ate authentic New York pizza, strolled around Central Park, kissed in the middle of the street when Lukas was buzzing with confidence that didn’t belong to him here, and how they went to the top of the Empire State Building to forget about everything that’s been happening to them and the ghosts of Tommy and Tracy.

 

  “Yeah,” Rose chimes, but her voice sounds a little off, terse almost. Lukas doesn’t spend much time trying to think of the reasons why. “People say they saw him at the memorial service too, but not at the overnight with counselors.” She crosses her arms over her chest and bites her bottom lip for a second. “Where did you even go?”

 

  “Is that really important? My dad doesn’t know that I skipped, that’s all that matters.” 

 

  Rose’s expression tenses even further and she opens her mouth to respond, but the bell rings overhead and Lukas kisses her cheek before ducking into class, giving her nothing more than a brief ‘see you later’. She’ll be pissed and she’ll ask him about it even more during their third period, but at least he can escape it for a good two hours, that would give him enough time to make up a lie. 

 

 When third period does roll around, he and Rose don’t speak much. She doesn’t seem as mad as Lukas expected her to be, which is a good thing, but it’s also a little unnerving. Normally, she would freak out over Lukas avoiding a question or brushing her off since it made her feel that he didn’t care about her, but now she seems just as indifferent as he always is. He can’t have her break up with him, not now, not when Philip is here and Lukas feels as if he’s dangling by a thread. He needs her now more than ever, just not for the reasons she wants to be needed by him. 

 

  By the end of class, she warms up a little, and starts to talk about what happened at the overnight, and walks through the hallways with her arm linked up with his, smiling up at him as per usual. 

 

  “So after they finished with all that therapy bullshit we had a seance for Tommy and Tracy. I swear I could like  _ feel  _ them.” 

 

  Lukas can’t stand this sort of talking with Rose. She’s so dramatic over the dumbest things, like most girls he knows are, and he wished he didn’t have to put up with it so often, especially over things that were as serious as Tommy and Tracy getting murdered. Well, Rose and the rest of the town didn’t know any better, but death was still serious and here she is talking about having a seance and how dying young is romantic and feeling Tommy and Tracy’s ghosts there in the room with her. It’s bullshit. 

 

  “Yeah, whatever.” He says it with an attempt laugh in his tone, but it obviously doesn’t work because the next thing he knows, she’s looking up at him with her lip curled and irritation written all over her face. She doesn’t say anything for a minute, but then she’s rolling her eyes and looking at anything but him. 

 

  “You’re just pissed you weren’t there.” 

 

  “Why would I go when I have a race to train for?” he asks her in retaliation. Normally he would avoid all forms of conflict with Rose, but this time something about her anger just dug into his skin and yanked until he could feel his own agitation build up inside him. 

 

  She doesn’t have the chance to respond because the intercom suddenly chimes to life, and the school’s receptionist’s voice is ringing throughout the school. “May I have your attention please. Lukas Waldenbeck and Philip Shea please report to the principal’s office.” 

 

  Of fucking course. Lukas tries to reel in his panic as Rose’s expression just turns more sour while Jim Stewart slaps his shoulder and laughs, “oh, busted!” before walking away to whatever class he had next. 

 

  “Philip?” Rose asks, and Lukas’ full attention is brought back down to her at just the mention of his name. “I swear that guy is like obsessed with you or something.” 

 

  Well, honestly, it really is the other way around. 

 

  “Yeah, idiot’s probably still crying cuz I kicked his ass.” It’s the best excuse he’s got, and Rose’s expression doesn’t change at all as she shakes her head at him, so he knows that she doesn’t buy it either. They part ways, and Lukas heads down to the principal’s office, trying to quell the nervousness swelling inside him and clear the ringing in his ears. 

 

  When Lukas gets to the office, Philip is already standing there with his arms crossed and jaw clenched. Their eyes meet for half a second, but something in Philip’s expression makes Lukas tear his eyes away because he can’t stand Philip looking so pissed at him; he really should be used to seeing him so angry by now. 

 

  “Can either of you explain to me what made you both skip the overnight with counselors? It wasn’t an  _ optional  _ trip.” 

 

  “I can’t speak for him, but I just didn’t want to go,” Philip says, and his tone is full of thinly-veiled anger. The principal raises his eyebrows at the obvious disrespect, but Philip just keeps talking. “It’s personal stuff that I didn’t want to get reminded about. Or does the school want to get into my personal business too? I’ve got a whole sob story the counselors could pick apart.” 

 

  “Mr. Shea,” Mr. Lewis snaps, and the corners of Philip’s eyes tighten even further in irritation. Mr. Lewis’ attempt at intimidation clearly doesn’t work on him the way he wanted it to. “The school is trying to help you. But more attitude like that from you will land you straight in detention for a good week.” 

 

  Philip’s lips almost curl, and Lukas is reminded once again that he grew up in the city. Small town school punishment is probably laughable to him compared to all the shit he obviously has gone through. “Do you think I care about detention? I just want to know what right the school has to drag me out of my house all night to talk about things I  _ don’t want to talk about _ . I come here to get my degree so I can go to college and get a job. That’s it. I don’t need your free therapy over something as serious as death and overdosing. I know plenty about it, thanks.” 

 

  “We want to help you-” 

 

  “I don’t want your help,” Philip interrupts, shaking his head and crossing his arms even tighter over his chest. Lukas isn’t even sure anymore if this is a ploy to get them out of trouble of the skipping or not, he looks genuinely pissed. “The school shouldn’t require me to go to some overnight with counselors when that’s not what it’s meant for.” 

 

  “School is to educate you, and that includes educating you about death and drugs and overdosing,” Mr. Lewis argues, going red in the face. 

 

  “Like I said, I know plenty about it, and I know you know exactly what’s in my file so don’t pretend you don’t,” Philip practically growls, “I’m not going to give you fake reasons as to why I didn’t go. I didn’t want to go so I didn’t go so just punish me for it.” 

 

  “That’s a week in detention for you, Mr. Shea,” Mr. Lewis concedes, then turns around to face Lukas. “What about you?” 

 

  “I’ve got a race to train for. I didn’t want to waste time on this stupid overnight.” 

 

  Mr. Lewis just shakes his head and tells him that he has a week of lunch detention for skipping the trip, then reminds Philip he has both overnight and after school detention for a week for skipping and talking disrespectfully to a teacher, the principal no less. They both head out of the office, and when Lukas is halfway started down the hall, Philip snags his arm, not sounding half as angry as he did in the office. 

 

  “Lukas, hey-” 

 

  “Get away from me,” he growls at Philip, ignores the hurt in Philip’s face, and turns on his heel to stalk down to his locker to get his textbook for his fourth period class. 

 

  “What’s up with you and Philip?” Rose asks, suddenly appearing behind him. 

 

  “Nothin’.” 

 

  “I’m so sick of you never talking to me,” she says, then when her eyes shift to his wrist, they widen and her mouth twists again like it did earlier. “Is that a club stamp?!” Before his brain can even catch up to what is happening, she reaches out to grip his wrist. “What the hell, Lukas? You ditch me on the overnight to go hang out with random sluts?” 

 

  He hates how she always makes every issue about her. She acts as if the overnight was going to be a date night for them that he ditched her to go do tricks on his bike, or hang out with random sluts as she said. She does this a lot when things don’t go the way that she wants them to in their relationship. She gets all crazy and insecure about it and tries to make Lukas look like the bad guy in every single scenario. He was so tired of these cycled, one-sided arguments.

 

  “Are you crazy?” 

 

  “You go clubbing with Philip?” 

 

  The question catches Lukas off guard, and  _ yes  _ is on the very tip of his tongue, and he almost lets it slip in a fit of stupidity, but he manages to force sarcasm into his voice coupled with an eyeroll when he says, “yeah, right.” 

 

  “Then where did you go?” Rose demands, crossing her arms defensively over her chest as if that’s how she’s keeping herself held together, but she doesn’t seem upset in the way she’s about to break down into tears, but in the way that she’s about to punch Lukas in the face. “Where did you go?” she repeats, her voice going a little shrill, and Lukas panics so he just cups her face and kisses her, trying to coax her into calming down the only way he knew how. 

 

  “Slow down, slow down,” Lukas says gently, and quickly tries to think of a place that requires stamps to get in instead of just a club. “It’s from a bike expo.” 

 

  Her shoulders sag a bit when she exhales through her nose, eyebrows drawing together as she looks up at Lukas through her lashes, looking guilty and apologetic, but just for a second. Then, the apologetic expression slips from her face to something much more melancholy and pensive. “I don’t even know why I’m with you anymore,” she says softly, and she’s begging him with her eyes to tell her exactly why she is with him and why she wants to be with him, but his throat clogs and his mouth dries. He can’t answer her when he doesn’t have anything to say she would want to hear. 

 

  She walks off after a couple seconds of silence on Lukas’ part and he doesn’t reach out to catch her or chases after her. He doesn’t have anything more to say to her than he did two seconds ago, and she doesn’t deserve his half-assed excuses anymore. He doesn’t know why she’s with him anymore either. 

 

  He clicks his tongue in agitation, looks down at his club stamp then slams his locker shut. He walks numbly down to his next class, not able to think of how to fix this thing with Rose. It’s all Philip’s fault, if he hadn’t showed up to town, if he hadn’t kissed him in the cabin, if he hadn’t dragged him to the city and to the damn club that gave him this stupid stamp in the first place. A small voice in the back of his mind reminds him that it isn’t Philip’s fault that Lukas is sick inside; if Lukas wasn’t the way he was then Philip wouldn’t have become  _ anything  _ to him at all. 

 

  He clutches at his backpack straps tightly, passing the bathroom instead of going inside to wash off the stamp because that would only look like he had something to hide and Rose would get even more suspicious. He just goes into his class, sits down in the very back of the class instead of his usual spot next to Chad, and wrings his hands under his desk for the entire period, his stomach never unclenching. 

 

  Once last period finally ends, a period he and Rose also share, Rose walks out beside him which he wasn’t expecting at all. He goes for casualness, not wanting to somehow trigger her and bring her back to their earlier argument for as long as he possibly can. He settles to say, “well, that was the most boring class ever” because they have a long-standing tradition of complaining about history every time the class lets out. 

 

  She doesn’t take the bait, and instead looks up to him still obviously angry. “You better tell me what’s up,” she demands, “cuz you’ve been acting super weird.” 

 

  Lukas glances around them, more worried about whether or not people heard her getting angry at him over being super weird for the past couple weeks, or maybe even since Philip first showed up to town, then pushes her gently towards the lockers to get them out of the way of others heading toward the front doors. 

 

  He’s been thinking of an excuse for himself for his behavior lately to lie to Rose about. He obviously can’t imply anything about the murders, or Philip, or anything close to the truth, but he’s been an expert liar for years. What do most teenage guys get nervous around their girlfriends about? Well… 

 

  “Hey, wait wait wait,” he almost whispers, and once he’s got her back pressed against the lockers, he blocks her in my placing his palms on either side of her head against the lockers. “I just… I wanted it to be special.” What better way to get her to forget her suspicions about him and their latest arguments by convincing her he’s been acting weird because he wants to do the exact thing she’s been implying for the last week. 

 

  Her eyebrows raise, urging him to go on, and Lukas gives her a smile that he hopes looks shy as well as eager. He’s got her right where he needs her again. “I think we should do it. Soon.” 

 

  Her face immediately brightens, and her head tilts slightly, keeping her eyes locked on him full of adoration. “Really?” 

 

  “Yeah. At that look-out spot.” A real smile crosses his face this time, and it isn’t because he’s excited by the thought of having sex with her at that look-out spot like she thinks, but just because he knows his weird behavior will at least have some sort of explanation for her now. When it comes time to actually have sex with her… he doesn’t want to think that far ahead right now, but for now, just having her on his side again is a huge relief. 

 

  “It would be romantic right?” 

 

  “Yeah,” he agrees, and she laughs right before he cups her face and pulls her into a kiss. After a few seconds, she hums against his mouth and pulls away with a grin. 

 

  “Baby, people are looking.” 

 

_ Good. Let them keep looking at him kissing his girlfriend and being exactly who he’s supposed to be.  _ He wants to say that aloud, but when he pulls away from her and looks over to their right to see a couple of guys giving them knowing looks, he just smiles at them in a sort of triumphant way. 

 

  “I don’t care,” he tells her then follows her outside the school. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he thinks back to last night in the city where he was kissing Philip outside in the street with much more passion behind it than he’s ever been able to kiss Rose with. Then, on the street in the middle of Manhattan, he really hadn’t cared who was looking at them. At school or anywhere else with Rose, he  _ does  _ care who sees them. He doesn’t care in the same way he would if somebody were to see him even holding hands with Philip, he’s not scared of it, he  _ wants  _ people to look at him with Rose and think that there’s nothing wrong with him. 

 

*******

  When Lukas gets home after dropping Rose off at her house, the reality of the situation finally sinks in when he’s doing his algebra homework. He’s in the middle of trying to solve for  _ x, y, and z  _ when he suddenly realizes that he’d told Rose he wanted to have sex with her. He knows that he told her that, but it wasn’t until right then when he realized what exactly that meant. 

 

  With the panic of her breaking up with him when he’s never needed to hide behind her more has dulled away to nothing more than a hum of inconsequential anxiety in the back of his mind, a perturbation is awakened unexpectedly within him. He said he wants to have sex with Rose, therefore, Rose believes that Lukas really wants to have sex with her because what has he said or done that would make her believe otherwise? So, consequently, he’s going to have to have sex with Rose. Soon. At that look-out spot just like he promised earlier. 

 

  He drops his pencil and puts his head in his hands with a groan. He wasn’t even able to get it up when she wanted to blow him, and really, a mouth has no gender so he could have gone along with that if he just closed his eyes and rolled with the punches, but… but actual penetrative sex is different. He’s not naive by the fundamentals of it, he knows exactly what happens during sex even though he’s never been interested in any kind of porn even though the guys at school always talk about it like it’s the best thing in the world. 

 

  He’s not- he isn’t  _ gay  _ but he has no desire to have sex with Rose, or any girl for that matter. He’s never wanted to have sex with a guy either (he furiously dismisses the image of Philip lying on his bed with his shirt rucked up and jeans pulled down from just a few days ago), but that’s beside the point. He  _ told  _ Rose that he wanted to, and that he was ready to do it too, so that means that he has to do it with her, and soon. 

 

  “Fuck,” he breathes heavily into the palms of his hands, then sits up completely when he hears his phone go off next to his homework on the desk. He turns on his phone, and even though he expected to see Philip having texted him, it’s Rose. 

 

_ I told my parents I’d be home late tomorrow because of a project with a few friends. ;) _

 

  “Fuck,” he repeats, this time a little louder as he concentrates on the winky face at the end of her text. He knows what the winky face implies and he knows why she told him that she told her parents she’d be late home tomorrow. “Shit,” he groans, and his thumbs hover over the keypad on his phone screen, trying to think of something to reply to that won’t let her know he’s panicking on the inside. 

 

_ We’ll leave straight after school  _ is all he sends, then he puts his phone on silent and turns his attention to his homework. He isn’t too sure if he’ll be able to concentrate enough on it to figure out the equations now there’s this cloud of anxiety in his head, but he tries his best just so he can avoid his phone for as long as possible. 

 

  It’s a couple hours later, after dinner, when he finally looks at his phone again. He just has one text from Rose that’s an  _ xo  _ so he ignores it. He doesn’t have anything from anybody else, including Philip which is incredibly disappointing even though it really shouldn’t be. He and Philip didn’t split on good terms this morning and Lukas snapping at him in the hallways didn’t help, especially after he’d landed himself both lunch and after school detention for a week. He doesn’t think Philip will ever try to text him or call him again. 

 

  He almost goes to his contacts to text Philip himself, but he turns his phone off instead, places it on his nightstand and goes to take a shower. If Philip wants to completely stop talking to him then that’s for the best and it’s exactly what Lukas needs. Philip and him just continuing this friendship or whatever it was wasn’t helping him in the least, but was actually just making it worse. He doesn’t need that. He should be happy that Philip hasn’t tried to reach him all day and not even thinking about it right now, but he can’t stop. 

 

  As much as he should want to stop hanging out with Philip, he  _ doesn’t.  _ He wants to keep Philip’s friendship because he’s the only person he’s been able to feel as comfortable as he does around, and he doesn’t want to lose that. He doesn’t want to lose Philip. 

 

  When he gets out of the shower, his phone is lighting up with the signal of new notifications. He sighs, picks it up and skims through the messages that Chad sent him. 

 

_ People are freaking out about you skipping still, and it’s getting worse. They’re all tweeting about it. You and that Philip guy didn’t skip together did you? That’s all people are saying.  _

 

__ Lukas nearly drops his phone out of his hands. No. No _ nonono  _ they cannot be talking about he and Philip together in the same story, especially not one like this that is getting disturbingly close to the truth. He can’t have people coming to the conclusion that he and Philip are even friends because that will just open up so many different possibilities for rumors and he can’t have that. 

 

_ No we didn’t fucking skip together. I didn’t even know he didn’t go. Why are people saying this?  _

 

_   I don’t know man. Nobody else skipped except you guys so people are making up all kinds of stuff.  _

 

_   I went to a bike expo. I don’t even talk to the guy  _

 

_   I don’t know why people are saying what they are. It’ll chill out when people have something else more exciting to talk about, you know how it is here. _

 

__ Lukas doesn’t reply to that, because he’s only able to think about the last bit of Chad’s text. People will stop talking about it when something more exciting comes up. Of course. Lukas puts his phone down and rubs at his temples, wondering what the hell could happen that would be exciting enough to get them to stop talking about him and Philip. Just as long as Philip isn’t in the story, they can talk about Lukas all they want just not with Philip, with anyone but Philip- 

 

  Rose. He’s having sex with Rose tomorrow. He needs- he needs proof, he needs people to get  _ him and Philip  _ out of their minds and put him together with Rose again instead. The easiest way to get people to believe there’s nothing wrong with him is to have sex with her, right? He needs a sex tape. He needs- he needs Philip to film it. 

 

*******

_ Meet me on the roof before class  _ is what Lukas sends to Philip almost as soon as he rolls out of bed the next morning. He needs to talk about this sex tape with Rose and he needs to make sure Philip understands why he needs it to be done so desperately. 

 

  When he gets to school and up to the roof, Philip still hasn’t replied and he only has another ten minutes to show up so they can talk. He saw Philip get dropped off by Helen about five minutes ago, but Philip still hadn’t made his way up to the roof. He wanted to know why Helen was suddenly driving Philip to school all the sudden, and even though he knew it probably wasn’t because he’d told her that they saw the murders in the cabin, his mind wouldn’t stop jumping to that conclusion. 

 

  He began to type out another text to Philip, asking where he was, but before he could even get it finished, he heard gravel crunching beneath feet. He glanced up from his phone and saw Philip making his way over to him. He didn’t look as irritated as Lukas imagined he would be, but that also wasn’t his greatest concern right now. 

 

  “Hey, I got your text. What’s up?” 

 

  “Why is Helen driving you to school all the sudden?”

 

“I don’t know. Maybe because I finally told her stuff.” Philip’s statement is enough to send a wave of panic through Lukas, and his face contorts with it. 

 

  “You told her what we saw?” 

 

  “No, I told her that I’m gay.” 

 

 Lukas’ mind goes completely blank, not understanding what the hell would compel Philip to ever tell anybody about him, especially someone like Helen who already doesn’t seem to like him. He just doesn’t understand what would make somebody want to tell  _ anybody  _ about this sick part of themselves. “Why?” 

 

  “Why not?” 

 

  Lukas can think of a dozen reasons why Philip should have never told anybody about him being gay, but the first one that jumps predominantly to his mind spurts out of his mouth before he can even stop it. 

 

  “Shit, now they think I’m gay too?” 

 

  Philip’s expression shutters and Lukas knows he’s fucked up as soon as he can’t tell what Philip is thinking, except just that he’s angry and hurt. 

 

  “No. No, now they think you’re a homophobic bully, which you are. What are we doing up here? What’s going on?”

 

  Philip didn’t even give him a chance to respond about the homophobic comment, but he didn’t drag Philip all the way up here just to fight with him or talk about how Philip came out to Helen and Gabe. He has bigger things to worry about right now. 

 

  “People are talking about us ditching together.” 

 

  “Okay, then don’t hang out with me anymore.” 

 

  Well, duh, that would help out a lot wouldn’t it? Lukas fights the urge to roll his eyes at Philip, because Philip isn’t trying to help him and he’s pissed. 

 

  “Oh, I’m not going to but that’s not gonna fix it. They’re all saying stuff, I need it to  _ stop.”  _

 

__ Philip doesn’t get it. Philip will  _ never get it.  _ Philip has the confidence to go up to Helen and Gabe and his mom and tell them that he’s not normal in the way that means he likes to kiss other guys instead of pretty girls. Philip doesn’t care about what other people think about him and walks around school with his head held high because everything everybody is saying about him doesn’t matter. 

 

  Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter to Philip and it never will, no matter where he is, but it does to Lukas. Even if he left for the city and lived so uncaringly like Philip, he still has his future career in motocross to worry about. Image is  _ everything  _ in motocross; there’s a reason there has never been a gay motocross rider, or at least not a successful one. 

 

  When Philip speaks up again, his words are frigid and clipped with barely restrained vexation. Lukas  _ hates  _ that anger directed at him, but he doesn’t hate it enough to do the one thing that would make Philip happy while, at the same time, crumble Lukas’ entire world.  

 

  “Okay. Okay, so you- do you want me to tell everyone that you didn’t kiss me in the cabin or at the club, that none of it happened, none of it’s real? Is that what you want me to do, go up and make a big announcement to everyone?”

 

  Lukas’ fists clench next to his sides, and he just doesn’t understand how Philip still doesn’t get it. Philip doesn’t care about what people think about him because he’s just lucky enough to not have to worry about people, but Lukas doesn’t have that kind of luck in his favor. Everybody in this damn town knows his name, knew his family before it fell apart with his mother’s last shuddering breath, knows the kinds of girls Lukas has dated and claimed to love, and thinks that he’s exactly who he pretends to be even though he’s far from that kind of person. 

 

  And Philip… Philip only serves to rub salt into that wound, but something about him has Lukas coming back for more time and time again. Lukas critically needs the strength in him to get away from Philip or he’ll only exist to be Lukas’ downfall. 

 

  “You’re an asshole,” Lukas hisses because Philip is. Philip doesn’t know anything about Lukas, but at the same time he knows  _ everything  _ about him, and all he does is throw it in Lukas’ face as if Lukas is trying to hurt him on purpose. 

 

  “Yeah,  _ I’m  _ the asshole,” Philip grits back sarcastically and Lukas’ lips thin.

 

  “Yeah you are.” 

 

  “Mm-hmm.” 

 

  There’s a long silence between them, and though Lukas knows Philip is furious with him, he still needs to try and convince him to help him and turn people away from rumors of him and Philip that are getting too close to the truth and toward something he needs them to start talking about for Lukas’ own sanity.

 

  “I’m gonna have sex with Rose.” 

 

  “Did you seriously drag me all the way up here just to tell me that?” Philip asks him, not looking up at Lukas’ face, and all the anger is drained from his voice. It sounds like he wants to be angry, and he’s trying desperately to sound angry, but Lukas knows he’s just hurt him again. 

 

  “No. I need your help with something.” 

 

  “Why would I help you with anything?” The crossness is back and Philip’s eyes are back on him. 

 

  Lukas falters because he doesn’t know why Philip would ever help him with anything. Lukas knows that the last thing Philip should do is help him, and instead he should be marching straight up to Helen to tell her about everything that they saw then turn right around and tell everyone at school just how much Lukas likes to kiss Philip when no one is looking. 

 

  Lukas knows, he knows he knows he knows, and he’s really amazed that Philip  _ hasn’t  _ done all that yet. He still has no idea what to say to let Philip help him with this one last thing and then they can go back to the way they used to be before all this shit started- 

 

  “Because you know I like you,” Lukas sputters out, and he sounds exasperated even though he doesn’t mean to. He’s surprised when Philip’s eyebrows don’t raise and his expression doesn’t shift into something sarcastic to say ‘do I?’ because Lukas feels he has every right to say that. Philip’s eyebrows raise, but he looks genuinely awed. Lukas isn’t sure if Philip’s surprise should make him happy or sick to his stomach because  _ Philip didn’t know he likes him.  _ “And I think I figured out a way for us to keep hanging out.” 

 

  Lukas takes a few hesitant, slow steps forward before he’s wrapping his arms around Philip and holding him close. The last time they hugged was right after the cabin- Lukas pushes the thought away before it can fester. He doesn’t want something like this that can be shared between him and Philip to be tarnished with guns and blood. 

 

  When they pull away from each other slightly, their eyes meet and lock, and Lukas licks his lips subconsciously from the desire to kiss him. He doesn’t. He doesn’t because he doesn’t deserve to kiss him right now, but more than that, they’re on the top of the school where anyone could happen to see them. It’s dangerous enough being up here with Philip talking and hugging, let alone kissing. 

 

  “What are you thinking?” Philip asks, stepping away and averting his eyes and breaking the spell. “What does having sex with Rose have anything to do with us hanging out?” 

 

  “People are talking about us ditching together.” 

 

  “ _ Yes,  _ you’ve said that,” Philip grits, and looks like he’s half a second away from departing and leaving Lukas to deal with the rumors all alone. 

 

  “If I have sex with Rose they’ll stop talking about it. They’ll stop- they’re getting  _ too close.  _ I need it to stop.” 

 

  “Okay,” Philip sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. From below them the first period bell rings, but Lukas doesn’t worry about it for right now. He’s been late to classes a thousand times, and this one more time won’t change anything. “So what? Are you going to screw Rose then brag about it? How does that include-” 

 

  “No one will believe me if I just said that we did it. I need proof, I need you to… to.” He trails off, but Philip doesn’t need him to complete his thought because his mouth is twisting and looking at him with that same irritated, disbelieving expression. 

 

  “What?  _ Film it?  _ Lukas, are you out of your fucking mind?” he snaps, but before Lukas can even try to get a word in to defend himself or explain his idea, Philip is shaking his head and running his hand through his hair. “You think that just because you say you like me I’ll just eat out of your hand? Tough fucking luck. Find someone else to be your ‘yes girl’ or whatever the hell you’re looking for. I’m done.” 

 

  Lukas blinks fast a couple of times, then reached out to grasp Philip’s wrist to keep him to stay. His mind flashes back to the hallway yesterday when he shoved Philip away after he did the very same thing, and for a very long second Lukas fears that Philip is going to push him away and that’ll be it, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t push him away, but he doesn’t turn to look at him and his back is tense with fury. 

 

  “Philip-” 

 

  “I can’t keep playing these mind games with you, Lukas. I can’t- I do it enough with my mom, just don’t. I won’t do this.” 

 

  Lukas’ jaw twitches, but he has nothing to say to that so his grip loosens around Philip’s wrist. As soon as his hand falls away, Philip is giving him one last wounded look over his shoulder as if it physically pains him to leave Lukas so vulnerable. In a fit of petty anger Lukas thinks  _ good, he should be fucking sorry _ but the anger dissipates as soon as it appeared because he knows Philip isn’t the one at fault here. Philip shouldn’t be paying for his sins, and Lukas isn’t going to force him to, not when he can hardly afford his sins himself. 

 

  “I wish I could help you the way you need,” Philip murmurs, and Lukas bites the inside of his cheek before he can ask what he means by that. He isn’t going to feign ignorance, he knows exactly what Philip is talking about. “I can film your bike videos but. But I’m not gonna film you and Rose. That’s not fair to her.” He pauses for a second, then meets Lukas’ eyes. “Or you.” 

 

  Lukas just grits his teeth and nods. Philip leaves and he doesn’t try to stop him this time. He sighs shakily, feeling his eyes prickle and burn, but he blinks them rapidly before he can even admit to himself he’s about to cry. Plan B it is then. 

 

*******

When school ends Lukas feels more anxious than eager. When Chad had come to him after having sex with Holly for the first time, he’d been all smiles and constant excitement; he hadn’t even been like that when he had sex with Angie. Lukas is pretty sure he was so happy because he actually loves Holly, and Lukas knows he should be that excited about Rose, but he’s just not. He feels sick. He feels especially sick now with her hands exploring his bare chest and mouth pressed to the crook of his neck, giggling breathlessly against his skin as he tries to unbutton her sweater. 

 

  “Buttons aren’t that hard, Lukas,” Rose says after another minute or so of struggling, and leans back to unbutton her sweater herself. He tries to not feel embarrassed by his shaking hands, and she looks at him like she finds it endearing when she really shouldn’t. His hands aren’t trembling because he’s nervous from eagerness to sleep with her, but because he feels like he’s not able to get enough air into his lungs. He doesn’t  _ want  _ this, but it’s never been about what he wants. 

 

  “Lie on the picnic table, baby?” Rose murmurs, her fingers trailing along his stomach and chest again. Her fingers skirt dangerously close to the edge of his jeans, so Lukas backs away from her to lie on the picnic table like she wants him to do just so he can get away from her wandering hands. He’s being ridiculous. He’s only prolonging this and he just needs it to be over before he vomits all over her or has a heart attack. 

 

  She climbs on top of him, and her weight on top of him is almost grounding. It’s comforting in a way like a hug is, which is hard to explain, but when she leans across him to slip her tongue into his mouth he doesn’t dwell on the thought too long. He settles his hands on her hips and his fingers flinch a little when he’s startled by how curvy she is. 

 

  He should be used to the feel of her hips beneath his hands, and he is, but he’s not used to it when her thighs are straddling his hips and pressing him down to a picnic table and her breasts are pressing against his chest. He’s used to Philip’s hips beneath his touch in this position, and he shudders beneath her at the phantom press of Philip’s body on his and the warmth of his moving body under his hands. She misjudges him and giggles flirtatiously, thinking the shudder was for her, and Lukas wishes that it was. 

 

  She guides him back into another kiss with her hand pressing against the back of his neck and starts grinding her hips against his. His mind jumps to when he’d done the same thing to Philip in his bedroom just last week, and a trembling breath escapes him from the memory. The lone memory isn’t enough to get him hard and not nearly enough to keep him that way to do anything with Rose, but she’s urged along with the sound he made. 

 

  It feels good, what she’s doing, but there isn’t anything except the slight friction that’s going in his favor. There’s nothing to look at or touch to turn him on because everything about Rose just screams female and that just doesn’t do it for him like it should. He needs… he needs- 

 

  She suddenly stops moving and makes an impatient gesture with her hand, the look of arousal easing from her face. “What’s taking so long?” she asks, gripping at his forearm, and he rubs her thigh in an attempt to be reassuring. He doesn’t know how to answer her without telling her the truth, so he at least goes with a half truth. He’s good at those too. 

 

  “I’m not ready yet. Just give me a sec, okay?” He’s not ready yet, he doesn’t think if he’ll ever be ready, but he doesn’t think she’ll give him anything more than a second. 

 

  “Seriously?” Okay, maybe not even a second. “Why can’t you get it up?” 

 

_ Because she’s not attractive to him. Because Philip is the only person who’s ever gotten a reaction out of him. Because maybe, just maybe, he’s not attracted to girls.  _

 

__ “Maybe my ice baths?” He tries to say it confidently but it comes out more as a question as though he trying to have her come up with an excuse for him. 

 

  “Who takes ice baths?” she asks, her voice lowering to a whisper, and her voice is dripping with exasperation. 

 

  He’s really not sure who in the hell would actually take ice baths, but he figures somebody who trains for motocross must take them, they are suggested to take after all. “For training,” he says in a rush, then tries to push his hips up against hers wanting to stop talking before he says something he can’t take back. “Okay just keep goin’, okay? Just keep going.” 

 

  She looks put-out, almost bored, as she starts moving against him again and Lukas tilts his head back until it’s hanging off the picnic table and he doesn’t have to see her face. If he can’t see her maybe he just imagine that she’s Philip and- 

 

  He catches movement within the treeline and for a moment his breath catches in his throat, terrified that somehow the killer had found him and he was going to kill him and Rose, but then his brain catches up with him and he registers Philip’s silhouette. 

 

  Philip came. Philip’s  _ here  _ and Lukas has no idea how he knew where they were or how to find them, but he doesn’t care because he’s here and Lukas’ whole body sags in relief. He stares at him for a long while, trying to see the expression on Philip’s face, but he’s too far away and Lukas can’t imagine it’s an expression he’d want to see anyway. 

 

  Seeing Philip makes it a little easier to imagine his body above his, pressing his down to this picnic table and grinding against him, but before he can get himself to where he needs to be, Philip is lowering his phone jerkily and walking away. Lukas watches him until he can’t see him in the trees anymore, and his jaw clenches along with his chest in something like heartbreak. He goes soft again. 

 

  Above him, Rose sighs and stops moving entirely. “Forget it,” she huffs as she climbs off of him, “this obviously isn’t going to work. Who knew a teenage guy would have an off day.” 

 

  Lukas wants to bang his head against the table until he blacks out, but instead of doing that, he props himself up and looks at Rose as she puts her sweater back on, her dark skin tinted red with humiliation. 

 

  “I’m sorry, Rose.” 

 

  “What about me is so disgusting to you that you can’t even-” Her voice breaks and she bites her bottom lip to keep herself from crying in front of him, but he can see the tears welling in her eyes. 

 

  “It’s not you!” he says hurriedly, sitting up completely so he can reach out for her and hold her close. As much as he doesn’t actually like her as a girlfriend he never wanted her to think she was  _ disgusting  _ or that any guy wouldn’t be lucky to have her. It’s all him, it’s all his fault. “I swear, Rose, okay? I’m telling you it’s the ice baths. I can’t- they have this effect. It warns guys about it on all the forums and crap. I shouldn’t have taken one last night.” 

 

  Her eyebrows furrow, but at least the tears are gone. “So the ice baths are why you’ve been acting so weird lately? I don’t understand what’s going on with you, Lukas. Why don’t you just talk to me?” 

 

  Because he has nothing to say that she would want to hear. 

 

  “I told you I’ve been thinking about us doing this for a while, I just didn’t want to pressure you. And… and this whole Tommy and Tracy thing is just really weird,” Lukas says, and Rose sighs through her nose, closing her eyes for a moment. 

 

  Her body relaxes near his and she nods, biting the inside of her cheek. “Okay. I- I’m sorry for freaking out, I get it. Just don’t take anymore ice baths, alright? It’s weird anyway.” 

 

  Lukas can’t help but laugh softly at that, nodding, because he agrees. It is a weird thing to do, and he’s a little surprised that it was the first thing to pop up in his mind when he thought of an excuse. “Okay, fair enough. I’ll stop taking my weird ice baths.” 

 

  She smiles back at him, “thanks”. ‘

 

*******

  When they were on the way to his bike and out of the woods, Rose had smacked his arm and told him there was a little gathering happening right behind the school and urged him that he should do some tricks on his bike. So he drove to behind the school with Rose, greatly relieved that she wasn’t making a big deal about what had just happened between them. 

 

  When they get there, everybody is already mostly drunk and gathered around laughing and shouting about stupid stuff. It’s already dark outside so nobody comes out and catches anybody drinking on school property, and even if they did the police station is the size of a walk-in closet and wouldn’t be able to fit half of the kids in there. 

 

  Lukas does small tricks in front of the crowd after some urging from the others, and they cheer loudly for him, but he’s not really doing anything special. He does a few wheelies and donuts that has everyone clapping and cheering, except Philip who’s leaning against the school building, quiet and playing with his phone. If Philip wasn’t busy leaking what he was to everybody’s phone then he would be wondering why he’s even here, but right when Lukas is finishing another dumb donut, he notices how the cheering has turned into excited chatter, everyone on their phones. 

 

  He scans the crowd for a minute before turning to look at Philip. Philip’s jaw tightens and his eyes narrow with displeasure, but he still nods at him. Lukas can’t thank him enough. Lukas tears his eyes away from Philip’s lone figure, looking as disinterested as he probably really is, and finds Rose bragging about him to her friends. When his eyes meet hers, she smirks and winks cheekily at him, and he’s a little blown away by how she’s taking the tape of them being leaked. 

 

  “Good job, Bro!” somebody shouts from the crowd, and Lukas thinks that it might be Chad, but he doesn’t really care who is saying what right now. All he knows is that everyone doesn’t give a shit about him and Philip anymore and that was all that mattered. 

 

  The cheers went on for a good few more minutes, but eventually the crowd began to disperse in search for something more exciting going on. Rose actually leaves with Summer to go see the puppies her Labrador just had, but before she leaves she gives Lukas a lengthy kiss, that Lukas knows she did more for show than anything else. 

 

  Lukas scans around for Philip after he waves Rose off, and spots him starting to make his way on home. He jogs up to him before he can get much farther. “Hey! It worked! No one’s talking about us anymore, they’re all talking about the video” he says happily. 

 

  “Great. Now everyone knows you like girls,” Philip comments drily, but Lukas doesn’t let Philip’s solemn attitude bring him down. He understands why Philip is upset, but Lukas needed those rumors to stop and they have, so now he and Philip can keep hanging out. Really, it’s a win-win for both of them, so he doesn’t understand why Philip is still so set on being unhappy about the whole thing. 

 

  “So, was it good? With Rose,” Philip asks him after he stops walking away, and Lukas’ brain short-circuits. 

 

  Is he serious? Does Philip seriously think that he would have had a good time with Rose even if he did have sex with her? It’s such a ridiculous question that has an obvious answer that Lukas ignores it and instead looks towards his bike. 

 

  “You want a ride home?” 

 

  Philip’s jaw clenches again and the resentment settles itself over his face again then turns away from Lukas. “No,” he replies curtly, digging his hands even further into his pockets. 

 

  “I’ll teach you how to ride the bike,” Lukas offers, as a sort of an attempt at a truce. He feels confident about it, but when Philip looks back over at him with his expression still hard, the hope dwindles in Lukas’ chest. “C’mon,” Lukas says weakly, doing his best to keep a smile on his face. He can’t lose Philip after all this, he just can’t. Lukas knows how selfish that is but, well, he’s never said he’s selfless. 

 

  “Really? I thought no one was allowed to ride your bike.” 

 

  Lukas blinks and turns to look at his bike. Right. He’d told Philip once that he never let other people ride his bike unless he was the one driving. But Philip is different, Lukas  _ wants  _ him to learn how to ride and maybe even have one of his own one day so they could ride around together. 

 

  “Yeah well, uh,” Lukas starts slowly, unsure of what to say. For a moment he panics, thinking that he had to hurry and think of some sort of an excuse or something witty, but he remembers that Philip knows he doesn’t ever really know what to say and that he doesn’t judge him for it, so he stops thinking so hard. So, instead, he reaches out and wraps his arm around Philip’s shoulders because touching Philip like this has always been easy. “C’mon,” he says while guiding Philip over towards his bike. “I’ll show you.” 

 

  “So, this is a motorcycle,” he says as if Philip doesn’t already know that, and Philip scoffs from beside him, the tension in his shoulders loosening. 

 

  “Thanks,” Philip says and Lukas grins. Lukas isn’t sure if Philip is thanking him for trying to cheer him up or being sarcastic over Lukas pointing out the obvious, but he’s pretty sure it’s both. Or, at least, he hopes it’s both. 

 

  As it turns out, Philip is shit at riding the motorcycle. He falls nearly three times until he gives up with a huff, and Lukas doesn’t argue with him because he doesn’t want his bike or Philip banged up too bad and Philip already has a bruise blooming on his knee. At the end of the night, when Lukas drops Philip off in front of Helen and Gabe’s house, the tape with Rose isn’t forgotten and neither is their earlier argument, but it’s not on the forefront of their minds either, and Lukas will take that over nothing. 


End file.
